Well, after a few weeks, we're returning to our study in the book of Genesis. If you're a visitor this morning, we're working through the book of Genesis, and we come to Genesis chapter 29, first book of the Bible, chapter 29, and we will pick up at verse 31 and read through chapter 30, verse 24. This is Genesis chapter 29, beginning at verse 31. Let us hear the word of the Lord. When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben. For she said, because the Lord has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me. She conceived again and bore a son and said, because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also, and she called his name Simeon. Again, she conceived and bore a son and said, now this time my husband will be attached to me because I have borne him three sons. Therefore, his name was called Levi. And she conceived again and bore a son and said, this time I will praise the Lord. Therefore, she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing. When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. she said to Jacob give me children or I shall die Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel and he said am I in the place of God who is withheld from you the fruit of the womb then she said here is my servant Bilhah go into her so that she may give birth on my behalf that even I may have children through her so she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife and Jacob went into her. And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then Rachel said, God has judged me and has also heard my voice and given me a son. Therefore she called his name Dan. Rachel's servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, with mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed. So she called his name Naphtali. When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Then Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son, and Leah said, good fortune has come. So she called his name Gad. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son, and Leah said, happy am I, for women have called me happy. So she called his name Asher. In the days of the wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes. She said to her, is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? Rachel said, then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes. When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, you must come in to me for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes. So he lay with her that night. And God listened to Leah and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. Leah said, God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband. So she called his name Issachar. Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. Then Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my husband will honor me because I have borne him six sons. So she called his name Zebulun. Afterward, she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah. Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach. And she called his name Joseph, saying, may the Lord add to me another son. May the Lord bless the hearing of his word. If I were to ask all of you this morning, how was your week last week? or how was your month or how was your year, I'm pretty sure that the patent answer that I would get is that it was good. It was good. But if I really asked you to be honest about it, what if I asked you to summarize your month or summarize your year? Imagine for a minute that Jacob was sitting by you in the pew and you asked him that question. Jacob, how are things going? And you just listened to what I read in Genesis 30. And if he were honest, can you imagine the answer? Well, I have to confess some things today to you. I have schemed my dying dad. I sold my brother's inheritance. I stole my brother's inheritance. I've totally disregarded my parents' God. I ran off. I joined myself to a pagan uncle in total disregard of God's promises. and last week, well, I reaped what I sowed. My uncle Laban worked me a good one. He gave me and got me in the very same deception that I pulled and now I'm a polygamist. And now I have to deal with two hostile housewives. I don't love one of them. In fact, the really legitimate wife I don't have an attraction to and she does everything she can to continue to win my love. She just keeps pulling that on me. The other, she's obsessed with herself. She's a narcissist. She said that she will die if I don't give her children. And all they do is fight. All they do is fight. My house is in utter turmoil. And you say, I'm sorry I asked. You know, I didn't mean to get all that. But if you really stood back from Jacob, and after he summarized all that, what would be the most painful thing through it all? God keeps on blessing me. I mean, I have really wrecked things, and all that I get is blessing and not cursing. Over and over and over and over. This has been the story of Jacob, and I think that's what has really surprised me, and I hope that this has kind of taken you captive by now in our study of Genesis, just how surprising the messy lives of these people are, and that God puts this here in the very first book of the Bible and says, see my saints, see my holy people, look at their lives, look at them and study these lives. I don't know if I sounded like a broken record already in the book of Genesis, I feel that i i have a bit but i i do i feel like i'm repeating myself but we keep coming across the same stories and all i seem to see as i go through this is that the messes seem to get worse and worse and worse i mean today is a a soap opera i mean it when i said before this is this is jerry springer's stuff love potions manipulation greed fighting bitterness scheming all in the household of our great father abraham which ultimately is the household of who jesus so what am i supposed to come up with this morning is the main point if you were working on this sermon what would what would you come up with as the main point of this well the shocking thing is that god does not fail these people he is relentless he keeps coming and nothing of any of the evil nothing of any of the the mess that these people make ever once overturns his plan and his promise and what he decided to do before the project even began, and it really does help to understand something like Philippians when he says the work that he begins, he's going to complete it. Nothing along the way is stopping the completion of the work that he began in us, and this is a play out of that. Genesis is a play out of Ephesians 1, or Philippians 1. I've got a mess this morning in front of me in Genesis chapter 30 that I don't think I've come across yet in the preaching of Genesis. And I hope again that you stand back and you say, well, again, I'm overwhelmed. I see again afresh the wonderful, powerful, effective working of God in people's lives through this, and that the driving response should be, well, if that's the case, then I really need to pursue as a saint the kind of righteous life that pleases him. It's what this should produce. Jacob, you remember the story of what's in front of us. Jacob has come to the land of the east. He's away from the promised land. He has been on the run and he's joined himself like the young prodigal to a cruel man who has no interest in him, who changes his wages 10 times. We'll be studying that. And Jacob is fully reaping what he sowed. Jacob is completely now suffering the consequences of the choices that he has made. So he thought in the last scene that he was working for Rachel for these seven years. But he was schemed by a greater schemer. The schemer was scheme by a greater schemer. He was schemed by good old Uncle Laban, and now he has landed himself in a polygamous mess. But if I could pause from all this and think about the one great tragedy in this text, who would it be? The real great tragedy in this particular text is Leah, isn't she? is. As you study Leah, you'll notice here that after this big scheme happened, God does something for Leah and God gives her four sons. And the key to understanding and getting into the mind of Leah a little bit is to understand the naming that goes on of these sons. You'll see that there in chapter 29. All of the names that Leah then goes on and gives. And notice she's the one doing the naming. You get a sense that Jacob is completely out of this. But Leah is the one really driving the giving of the names. And the first one, the first son that she receives from the Lord, she names Reuben. Reuben means see, a son. So in other words, she's crying out for attention with this first son. She holds up the son, and you could imagine her looking at Jacob and saying, Jacob, look, see, a son. And then she says that the Lord looked upon my affliction. And this moving statement, therefore, my husband will love me. Jacob, see? verse 33 it goes on she says in verse 32 and 33 because the lord has heard that i'm hated he's given me this son also and she called his name simeon simeon's name means heard he's heard me the lord sees that i'm unloved verse 34 she conceived again and bore son and said now this time my husband will become attached to me because i've borne him three sons therefore his name is called Levi, which means attached. You see what's happened here with this woman? Leah is desperately trying to win her husband's love. God has done something for me, Jacob. Do you see it? Look, here's my son, and God is hearing me. Do you see it? Do you see? I want to be attached to you when you stand back from this you really do feel the pain of leah here was a woman in the hands of all of these ruthless men and i mean it dad has no care for her all he does is use his daughter for his own greed and she is here you'll notice the text has made clear she's the she's the unattractive one. Anytime that anyone ever walked by Leah and Rachel, everyone was looking at Rachel. Dad's favorite was Rachel. Here comes this new charmer, deceitful in himself and Jacob. And now she's launched into this deceptive plan by dad. She's thrown into it and notice here Jacob doesn't even want her dad launches her in Jacob doesn't want her she gets thrown in the midst of all this the sense is that Jacob despised her her whole life desperately depicted here as trying to find love and never getting it whole life do you think this is a real challenge in our day for women i don't want to run away from this too quick they're wired to be loved and look how she's being treated this struggle happens in homes how many women have given themselves before marriage to try to hold on to a man how much do parents worry about that with daughters How many feel alone and neglected and unloved and who are in the hands of cruel men who don't care and who show absolutely no love? One psychologist writes, I know of no more potent killer than isolation, no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you from me and us from them. Isolation has been shown to be the central agent in the development of depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, and others. The devil's strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence and to isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time, pressures, work, demands, and economic anxieties. Signs of being unloved? Your spouse doesn't listen. Attitude of who cares? Tomorrow we'll talk about it. Feeling that you can never please. Feeling that one's going the other way. Now I want you to meet Leah. This is her life. This is the life that is put in front of you. Here. Jacob did not love her. And the text says she's crying out. Love me. Jacob, love me. Well, you've entered Jacob's house. And now what begins is a war like I've never studied before. Rachel sees this. Rachel sees that Leah is giving birth to all of these babies. And remember in that culture, you were nothing. This was your identity if you didn't have children. And notice the envy and the anger and the bitterness that begins to take over Rachel. In verse 1, Rachel sees and saw that Jacob, she bore Jacob no children. She envied her sister. She said to Jacob, give me children or I shall die. Create in me, Jacob, a child or I shall die. And you say, do what? Jacob responds, am I in the place of God? A strange twist to this is that she did die in childbearing with Benjamin, by the way. If you don't give me children, I will die. Ah, the polygamous life. In no situation where you ever have polygamy described in the Scriptures is it anything that ever worked out well. in fact any design that is outside of god's design never works out well it makes sense it was it's completely against the design of genesis chapter one and jacob is learning here already an important lesson he's trying now to keep two wives happy on the one hand he has an unsatisfied wife who wants his love whom he does not love and on the other hand now he has a jealous envious younger wife and younger sister to his older wife who's demanding children and now warring with the sister. You'll notice that. Envy has filled her. Bitterness has filled her. It is eating her up. And when anger eats people up like this, it goes somewhere. Before us now, she reinstitutes an old custom. We should know this custom. Remember it? Then she said, verse 3, Here is my servant Bilhah. Go into her so that she may give birth on my behalf and that even I may have children through her. So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife and Jacob went into her and Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Everyone should know this custom by now because it was the very thing that Sarah and Abraham tried. It was Abraham's greatest failure of his life. It was the custom that established by the matriarch, remember, Sarah, we'll go outside ourselves and we'll produce this ourselves and go into my servant Hagar. Same language, perhaps we will have children by her. The whole thing is being repeated. And you stand back and you think, well, you think Jacob would by now have said, no, no, no, no, listen, grandfather tried that and suffered terribly for this whole mess that's the do-it-yourself method he had a son he had to send away we don't want to do that we don't want to do that well Jacob's on board of course and he goes into Bilhah and has two children by Bilhah the first is Dan and Dan means literally judge Dan will be the tribe of judgment and then comes Naphtali and I want you to notice what happens here. Did you notice verse 4? So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. That's three now. He now has three wives. This is not a fling. This is another wife. And notice what Rachel's doing. She takes Dan and she holds up Dan and she says, She says, look, Leah, God has judged my case. See, God had nothing to do with that plan. In other words, God didn't ordain that. God didn't sanction that. And she drags God's name through the mud and says, see, it was their plan. And then as soon as she has Naphtali, meaning wrestled, she says, I have out-wrestled my sister. What, do you think Jacob stopped on that one? Jacob had out-wrestled his brother. They fought in the womb. And the whole course of Jacob's life now is being played out by two sisters at war in his own home. I won, says Rachel, the younger. I won. We've got a lot of babies being born here right now. If you fathers think you're up at night, you can take comfort in thinking about Jacob. It's almost, it's comical in the worst kind of way, isn't it? Jacob's reaping what he sowed. From the very time Jacob was in the womb with Esau, he wrestled, he clenched, he wrestled away through scheming the birthright and stealing from his brother. And in his own house, the two wives, there is bitter wrestling and scheming. And there he is at the center of it all. The whole thing replayed. We never get away with anything in life. Do you realize that? We all are doing certain things and we're all making choices about life. I can assure you, you're never getting away with it, ever. It always comes back to haunt, decision. And that's why we plead with young people in the decisions that they make. Birth wars have overtaken Jacob's tent. well back to Leah Leah says well two can play that game I can play that game in verse 9 when Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife then Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son and Leah said good fortune has come so she called his name Gad she bore him a second son happy am I for women shall have called me happy, Rachel. And she called his name Asher. Good fortune. Rachel, look at my good fortune. Look at how happy I am. I'm the happy one. Have you ever read the proverb that it's better to live in the corner of a housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife? Can you imagine two? I mean, that at least gets you out to the desert. You imagine four? You want a ticket to the moon. Now, this is bad. This is a mess. It gets worse. What we have described in verse 14, the firstborn of Leah goes out into the field, and he finds these mandrakes, and he brings them to Leah, and Rachel finds out about these mandrakes. And Leah says, listen, you want these too? Rachel wants the mandrakes. You've already taken away my husband, says Leah. You want my son's mandrakes too? Rachel says, okay. You can lie with him tonight if you give me the mandrakes. What are mandrakes? Mandrakes were a small plant with a root and you could pinch out orange colored substance. It would pop out and you could eat it. Today, the Wiccans use it to hallucinate. They were known as love apples. You never thought your pastor would preach today on love apples. It was an aphrodisiac. It was a love potion thought to arouse desire and induce fertility. The Song of Solomon speaks of it. These love apples this way. The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and besides our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved. I have laid up the love apples. Now, what just happened? Now, Jacob, a war has happened over Jacob's love with love apples. Jacob gets prostituted for the night. He gets bought. Verse 15, therefore he will lie with you tonight for your son's mandrakes. She thinks, well, if I get the mandrakes, what's giving away my husband's love for one night? I can use the love apples and get pregnant as many times as I want. So Jacob comes into the field, from the field, and Leah goes out to meet him. You are mine tonight. I hired you with my son's mandrakes. So he goes into her that night, and Leah conceives and bears a fifth son, Issachar. Wages. What's his name? God has given me my wages because I have given my maid to my husband. You say, what? God just honored my sin. I did it fairly. I bought him. Then she bore Jacob, verse 19. Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son. Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my husband will honor me because I borne him six sons. So she called his name Zebulun. And then in verse 21, the first daughter comes into the scene. Dinah, we'll come back to her later, a few weeks. Now, to say this is a mess this morning is a bit of an understatement. I try to take you through this very strange chapter that everyone's standing back, and I could say, you know, look at how awful these people are. I mean, look at what they're doing, and here they are. And you ask the question when you come to passages like this, what is God teaching us? What is God showing us? And it's as if he puts a giant mirror up. Do you know who this is? Israel was just born. the holy nation of God was just born this way now you think there's a message in that this is how it all started for Israel you kind of see how ugly it was when the pharisees were running around acting so righteous this is their beginnings and is it familiar well if i went through and i started asking the questions that this text would demand how many women have given themselves before marriage to a man thinking they could hold him how many women feel alone and unloved and neglected in our hands of men who are cruel how many are shown no love whatsoever how many homes are in absolute turmoil between the man and the wife how much turmoil really fills the home how many how many parents lament decision decisions that children have made? How many have seen children suffer in marriage because of the choices they made? All this thing's alive and well. This whole thing is alive and well. How much really of a mess have we made of our lives? And you see, if God were to enter into judgment and mark transgressions, no one would stand. If he threw the book, it would be over. But look at how God represents himself in this passage. I've been driving all this to get to this point this morning, so I hope you're with me. It's this point. There are three things said of the Lord that jump off the page. the chapter what's the first look at verse 31 when the lord saw this is back in chapter 29 when the lord saw that leah was hated he opened her room womb of all things that the lord could have looked at in this mess? What's he looking at? An unloved wife. An unloved woman. The outcast of the whole mess. And this whole scene begins with an outcast who is not loved and the Lord is looking at her. Leah was no innocent. But I do think it's dangerous to look at God when He deals with His own people as kind of a cosmic traffic cop who's marking and marking and marking and marking. Oh sure, He's going to judge the wicked. But do you see how God looks at His people? Do you see what His eyes are on? God looks at her and He is moved with what? passion. When he sees that she is unloved, he opens her womb and gives her the greatest blessing that was the greatest blessing in that culture. And little did she know how great that blessing would be. Look who comes from her. I can't get out of my mind the woman at the well. Here was a woman at the well who was being tossed around by man, the man, the man, the man. She had had five husbands. Who loved that woman? And she says, she says, are you greater than our father Jacob? She was tied there. The Samaritans were the unloved people. And Jesus is looking at her, had an appointment to go meet her, and he fills her with living water. She's done. Did you notice the development in Leah? You have all these sons mentioned. Reuben, see a son. Now my husband will love me. Simeon, the Lord has heard that I'm unloved. Levi, my husband will now be attached to me. And when you get to Judah, you get none of that. What do you get when you get to Judah? Now I will praise the Lord. Judah's the one. The Messiah comes from him. he's the answer. The spotlight is put there. I have learned in all my circumstances of hardship to praise the Lord even if my earthly husband does not love me. I'm satisfied. Boy, what a principle for all conflict and struggle that when you have the Lord's love, you have everything. You know the Lord sees all of your affliction. When the Lord saw, you know He wants you to understand today, you can praise Him in them. You know that He wants you to know He'll satisfy you in them. And He'll sanctify your deepest distress. That's not it. What's the second thing? In all of this fighting and catfighting and bickering and all this stuff that's going on in Jacob's house, What do you get in verse 17? So the Lord saw, and the Lord listened to Leah. Look at verse 22. And the Lord listened to who? Rachel. In their selfishness, in their fighting with one another, he hears their deep cry. He answers them. I read this passage the other night to my children. We were doing devotions and I said to them, you know, God will be with you always when you blow it and you will blow it in life. But you should learn something in this passage. I looked at them all and I said, what you should learn is when you are hurting and you are in pain because of the bad choices that you have made and you're worried and you're stressed, you should learn to call out to Him because he always sees and he always hears. His ear is given to you. Do you understand that? Even when you don't feel like anything's going past the roof, his ear is given to you. And not just that. Here's what amazes me about the passage. There's no prayer from these women. He's listening to their groanings. This is Romans 8. That the groanings, which cannot be unuttered, he is listening to them. He's hearing them. He knows their real groans and their sighs, even though they're full of selfishness and sin. He still demonstrates in the midst of this mess that he is what? Kind and compassionate and slow to anger and abounding in love. But that's not it. There's one other thing said about the Lord in this passage. It's in verse 22. The Lord remembered. Did you see that in verse 22? Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her, and He opened her womb. Now, if you have been listening in the study of Genesis now, every time that has come up, you get big moments. Remember it? When the flood had risen up over the earth and had destroyed everything? What was the point at which the waters receded? When the text said, and God remembered Noah. Remember when Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed? Remember what it said about Abraham? And God remembered Abraham. And here we are in the midst of this kind of conflict and the Lord now says, that he remembered Rachel. And he's telling us something so powerful that though sin deserves great punishment, he always remembers his promises. That from the beginning, when he said he would build Israel, when he told Abraham a mighty nation would come, God would accomplish that. And here they are. The 12 sons have come. And for the first time in the passage, God opens the womb of Rachel. And he hears her cry. And what does he do? He gives her Joseph. The most Christ-like figure in the Old Testament who's going to teach us about the Messiah. Both women were satisfied at the end of their... Did you notice this? Both women were satisfied with sons. Sons that spoke of God's Son. And the Lord wants us to understand this this morning. What does it birth out of Leah? Praise. What does it bring out of Rachel? He's taken away all my reproach. Well, isn't that true of us? You have the Son today. And what does it birth out of us? It births praise. And what does it bring out of us? All of your reproach has been removed. That's what Jesus has done for us. And that should cause us today to trust Him, to respond in love. And let me just say this as a point of strong application at the end. The Lord cares that husbands love their wives a lot. The Lord cares a lot about unloved wives. And you see, it was His church, His bride, who was neglected. And the Lord Jesus Christ stooped all the way down and he came down here to rescue a wife that was rebellious, cantankerous. And he made her beautiful. And he works ever to sanctify her. And he's always with her. He'll never leave her nor forsake her. And he wants our love for our wives to demonstrate that. In Christ, we find all of our delight. And so I pray today that this kind of praise bursts out of our lips as we understand He's taken away our reproach and loved us this kind of way. That calls for some prayer and singing to Him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we bow the head today and are grateful that You over and over and over instruct us of Your faithfulness and Your love. In the midst of these kinds of messes, if this kind of mess could be put on display before us and you work and accomplish your perfect will, and hear us in our deepest distresses, the groans of our hearts, and see and know and listen and remember, Lord, it's to you that all of our affection and praise belong. We bless your name this morning and pray for all of those who struggle with the things that are put before us on these pages of Scripture, that we ultimately would all be satisfied in your magnificent love and that it would drive us forward to be a people who lead out the kind of righteous life that pleases you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.