Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church Time to Go After twenty years in Haran, it was
time for Jacob to cut his ties and go home to Canaan. Here is what Jacob dealt with as he
headed home:
Everybody from time to time --
Christians and a lot of times folks, who are sort of Christians -- wants God’s
leading. God, what should I do? God, where should I go? Lord, who is that special someone
you have just for me? Lord, which college would you like me to attend? Which job would you
like me to take? Which house should I buy? At one time or another, we probably
all have been in that spot. As common as that sort of need is, I really think it is the
easiest stuff to trust God for. After all, those are the world’s routine items.
Everyone needs a house and a job. We need to pray about that. God does open doors and
close other ones. It is not to minimize our need for God’s leading in the routine
areas of life, but we look into the Bible here and I want to suggest that there is a
deeper level God moves in us. He moves in us at the point of our very souls, calling us,
tugging on us, convicting us, moving us, impressing us, speaking to us not necessarily in
a horizontal direction -- go here, marry him -- but
rather vertically. At a deeper level God calls us toward himself for his agenda, his
kingdom’s sake. It is more than a calling having to do
with circumstance, more than a career move. It is a kingdom calling. Out of mediocrity,
once we get our ducks in order we take a deep breath and say thank you Lord for blessing
my life. It seems as if that may be the time God says, “By the way, there is more and
I am going to call you on deeper ground. Come to higher ground.” I think we are lot more like Samson
than we care to admit. Samson lost track of what God had sent him to do. He was so
familiar with hobnobbing with the Philistines that he overlooked the fact that his job
description was to kill them. God had a design on Samson for his kingdom purposes and
Samson chose, as C.S. Lewis put it, making mud pies in the inner city because he couldn’t
understand what God would mean by having a holiday at sea. He didn’t respond. Jacob is our man here. He could have
stayed at Haran. He could have had a life there. He was amassing quite a holding. But God
had more in mind for him. For purposes of God’s kingdom, he laid his divine hand on
Jacob and said it is time to go. When he moved Jacob he did more than move him
geographically, he moved him spiritually. He lifted him up. He brought him closer to God
himself. We need to grasp and appreciate the
nature of following God’s leading. I want to suggest that it is more than watching
for open doors and jumping through them. It is a pursuit of God Himself. Compelling motivation (1-3) 1Now Jacob heard the words of Laban's sons, saying, "Jacob
has taken away all that was our father's, and from what belonged to our father he has made
all this wealth." There was considerable tension in
Laban’s home and that tension was increasing. In addition to Rachel and Leah, Laban
had sons and those sons were growing. Those sons were individuals Jacob had known for
years. He could tell these sons were getting more bitter and their bitterness seems to be
growing directly in proportion to the growth of Jacob’s flock. They could do the
math. They could see as that as Laban’s flocks and herds were shrinking and Jacob’s
were growing, the diminishing of their father’s holding was diminishing their own
inheritance. They were bitter about it. There was a time when they would
address Jacob in complete sentences, but that changed. It got to where they were merely
nodding at him, then sneering at him, then ignoring him all together until eventually they
were just talking about him. He could see clearly their open hostility and their venom. As
this was going on even Laban’s phony, pasted on smile was beginning to disappear
because he could count too and he could see that Jacob’s holdings were increasing and
his were diminishing. His words to Jacob now came not even mincingly, not even
deceptively, but through clenched teach. Jacob had been his meal ticket from heaven. For
years he had known that his personal well being was directly connected to the fact that
Jacob was part of his family. He had become no longer a meal ticket, but now Jacob was
Laban’s wary enemy. Jacob could have prevailed. He could
have hung in there. He could have said the day will come when I will be able to buy and
sell these half brothers of mine. He could have said Laban is no longer a spring chicken.
I can out wait this guy and then it will all be mine. He could have stayed where he was,
but the God of Bethel stepped into the middle of the equation and said Jacob, it is time
to go. I have more for you than what you will find here in this life, in this world. Concern for his family (4-16) Jacob was a thinker, a man of
reflection. He had been 20 years in working and building and changing and growing, but
also in remembering. He probably wondered what had become of Esau. He probably wondered if
his aged father, Isaac, was even still living and what of his mother, Rebekah? He had been
close to his mother, and had not seen her now for 20 years. He looked at his past family
and at the current situation, He looked at Laban and his kids and this mess and certainly
there had to come a time when in his own heart Jacob didn’t find any stability, any
foundation any longer in his first family and he certainly couldn’t find it here. Jacob was beginning to realize what we
all very much come to know. Our stability, our strength, our foundation, has to come from
God. Maybe that is a tougher transition for young people who are reared in a Christian
home, to come to that point where eventually you must say my family is wonderful and I
love them dearly, but my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and
righteousness. God must be my strength and reference and Lord. God Himself must be my
goal. Jacob was coming to that point. The God of Bethel had spoken. He was becoming Jacob’s
anchor to his soul and it was time to go. 4So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to his
flock in the field,
Jacob called his wives, with whom he
was pretty much legally and domestically stuck. Going home, going back to Beer Sheba, back
to the land of Canaan, was no small thing. It required the willingness of Laban’s
daughters. It would be a major undertaking. It would have to be executed secretly. He
would have to pull together everything he owned and all of his children and all his
holdings and get them out of there. They had a long way to go. If the daughters were not
willing, he knew he couldn’t go. 7"Yet your father has cheated me and changed my
wages ten times; however, God did not allow him to hurt me. Jacob brought Rachel and Leah up to
speed on the compelling motivation for him to leave. “Your brothers don’t seem
to like me much any more, do they? Your father Laban has ripped me off for years. Do you
girls realize I have been here 20 years? Do you realize I worked 7 for the first of you
and 7 for the second. Now these past 6 years my flocks and herds have increased while your
father’s have decreased. He doesn’t like me much any more.” 11"Then the angel of God said to me in the
dream, 'Jacob,' and I said, 'Here I am.' He recounts his own efforts. He
contrasts his efforts with the dishonesty of Laban and then he names God as his hero.
“But the LORD spoke to me. The LORD appeared to me. The LORD orchestrated the mating
of the flocks and the speckled and the mottled and the stripes. God has set this up and
God has done this thing. Now God is saying it is time to go. I have a higher calling for
you, Jacob. Leah and Rachel knew their father.
They had lived with him for a lot of years. They had observed his self-serving way. They
knew that the decisions Laban made and the words Laban spoke and the directions Laban
chose were all for Laban. They thought back to a wedding night, even then what should have
been the most exciting and joyous time, Laban deceptively swapped one sister for the other
and then extracted from the hapless husband a payment of 7 years of slavery. They remembered and they made fairly
strong statements that reflect their resentment of their father. 14Rachel
and Leah said to him, "Do we still have any portion or inheritance in our father's
house? The Bible indicates that Leah had some
spiritual savvy. Rachel clearly did not have much. That shows with her subsequent
behavior. They did understand their father and they were willing to throw in their lot
with Jacob and his God rather than stay with what they considered to be an uncertain and
losing proposition. This is not just wanderlust. This is
not just escape from his mess. He is going to pack up a lot of his mess and take it with
him. But he has his family in mind. That is not only because he is domestically sensitive.
It is because the God of the Promise has said, “You and your descendants.” He
recognizes in his family, as strange as this family was – two wives, two handmaids,
eleven sons to date and at least one, probably more daughters. Jacob understands that underlying it
all is the sovereign hand of the God of the Promise and he is willing to trust Him as he
moves out. His concern is for his family. Country to be covered (17-21) Going home is no small thing
logistically. He had to get them all packed. They have to get their stuff together. They
have to get their flocks and herds rounded up. They have camels too, evidently, and
servants and hired help to help them. They have to move their possessions without Laban’s
knowledge because they don’t want trouble. They don’t want the hassle, they don’t
want to have to deal with Laban. Then they have to move 400 to 450 miles with all this. There are roads, but there are also
rogues along the way. It will not be an easy move, yet they are packing, sorting,
planning. They are learning to trust. They set a date and the word is out among the family
of Jacob, “Act normally. Don’t act like anything is different or changed,
because as soon as Laban is with his sheepshearers we have to go. Be ready.” Even Rachel acted normally. She sneaks
into her father Laban’s tent and swipes his household idols. It is debatable what her
motivation was. Some suggest she wanted something by way of inheritance and these things
had some intrinsic value to them. Others, and I suspect more accurately, made a spiritual
mistake in connecting those little idols, those icons, with the blessing of God. In the
case of Rachel, she was hoping for fertility. Oftentimes that is what they were used for. She only has one son, Joseph. Her sister has six,
plus daughters. Zilpah and Bilhah are way ahead of her too. Rachel is interested in fertility and
she is her father’s daughter. She is sneaky and underhanded and she is a thief. She
was not trusting God. Jacob was and happily she is under his family umbrella for the time.
He doesn’t know that she has stolen these things. Confrontation (22-42) Laban has gone to shear the sheep. 20And Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him that he
was fleeing. Laban wasted no time in
engaging pursuit and he was furious. He pursued him a distance of 7 days journey, probably
150 miles. He overtook him in the hill country of Gilead. Jacob might have made it nearly
half way, when there is a cloud of dust on the horizon and Jacob says, “I think I
know who that is.” It was Laban and his angry sons and they overtook them. It’s interesting how
this works. Laban caught up with Jacob and confronted him. His words were typical. Twice
Laban accuses Jacob of being deceptive. He was right, Jacob was being deceptive and Laban
called him on it. 26Then
Laban said to Jacob, "What have you done by deceiving me and carrying away my
daughters like captives of the sword? His daughters had already
come to the conclusion that they were not daughters; they were foreigners, they said. At
best, property like bargaining chips, as though they were captives. You sweep them away
with the sword. Do you sense exaggeration here? Melodrama for effect. 27"Why did you flee secretly and deceive me, and
did not tell me so that I might have sent you away with joy and with songs, with timbrel
and with lyre; He summarizes by saying to
Jacob, “You have acted foolishly.” I think to myself, “Laban, you have just
painted a self-portrait.” Laban has just described himself. He is deceptive. He is a
scoundrel, a liar, foolish. Again, in the Bible, the word fool is not synonymous with
village idiot. The word fool describes the individual, who has chosen to live his or her
life without the living God of the universe calling the shots. It is an individual who
lives as though God did not exist, did not matter, or did not care. That is a fool and
Laban was one. He could not decide
whether Jacob’s God or Abraham’s God or Nahor’s god or the ones in the
cupboard were true. He lived as though God were irrelevant. Our world today is full of
fools and occasionally we play the role ourselves. Decisions and priorities and
expenditures and places and people – we act foolishly and Laban got the gold on this
particular day for foolish behavior. He said, “By the way, Jacob, where are my idols?”
He calls them his gods. 30"Now you have indeed gone away because you
longed greatly for your father's house; but why did you steal my gods?" Laban – if your gods
are so great, why don’t they just call out to you? Don’t you think that is
ironic – that he would expend all this energy and effort and emotion, then say,
“Oh by the way, where are my gods?” 32"The one with whom you find your gods shall
not live; in the presence of our kinsmen point out what is yours among my belongings and
take it for yourself." For Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them. I would think that Laban,
after all this time and all these years, would have had these people figured out. I am
amazed that Laban didn’t begin with Rachel’s tent. There are two reasons perhaps
that he did not. Maybe he favored Rachel and just did not want it to be her. That is the
least of my reasons. The other is that I don’t think he knew his daughters. He had
swapped one off for the other and thought nothing of it. Finally in verse 36, Jacob
had enough. I get the impression with Jacob that he is kind of the opposite of his
unidentical twin, Esau. Esau is fast on the temper, impulsive and impetuous. Jacob is not
like that. He has a long fuse; in this case his fuse is about 20 years long and once Laban
is unsuccessful in his search, once Laban has gone through Jacob’s holdings from one
end to the other, finally Jacob lets him have it. 36Then Jacob became angry and contended with Laban;
and Jacob said to Laban, "What is my transgression? What is my sin that you have
hotly pursued me? You can just see Jacob
getting redder and angrier. He has rehearsed a speech over and over in his head. There
could have been a time perhaps when he would have delivered it more graciously. Not now. 38"These twenty years I have been with you; your
ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten the rams of your flocks. In a setting like this it
would not be unheard of at all for some pilfering to be going on. Rustlers roamed the
range in those days. Jacob said if a beast damaged one of yours you never saw it. I
absorbed the loss. You always got the good stuff. 42"If the God of my father, the God of Abraham,
and the fear of Isaac, had not been for me, surely now you would have sent me away
empty-handed God has seen my affliction and the toil of my hands, so He rendered judgment
last night." Laban, if you could have
figured out a way to do it, you would have kept my wives, my children, my flocks and when
you were done with me you would have sent me out. I know it and so do you. Jacob is on a
roll. Notice what he says: “If the
God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had not been for me”, If I did not have the good graces of the
promise-making and promise-keeping God, you would have won, Laban. You are not going to
win, Laban; God is going to win. Jacob brings it around,
not to his own cleverness, not to his own hard work and sacrifice. He brings it back to
where it belongs --- to God. He says I credit the God of heaven, the God of promise with
my success and, Laban, with your failure. It is commonplace with
people to go toe to toe to say it’s my way or the highway. You are wrong; I am right.
Jacob does not play the game. He says God is right. He brings it back as he should, as we
should to the merit of the God of heaven. Here is an interesting
thought about our hero. Jacob wanted to run away. He was packing up. He was going to run
away out of fear. He was afraid of Laban. He did not want to face him. He would have run
away but God would not have it. God spoke to Laban in a dream and said you had better not
try to sway this issue one way or the other. God got into this because there was
unfinished business that God wanted wrapped up. Jacob would have gone on
from this, rehearsing that speech and hating his father-in-law to his grave. In rehearsing
the speech, his children would have learned it too and the strife would have been
perpetuated from generation to generation. Laban would have lived in anger, perhaps envy,
toward his son-in-law and nothing would have been set or resolved. Nothing would have been
said. There would have been all these sinful loose ends out there dangling. God wanted
them wrapped up. He brings these two together and finally Jacob speaks his mind. Cairn built (43-55) The words were said that
needed to be said. God wanted things dealt with. Jacob and his children and his wives and
Laban needed this speech and they got it. It seemed to change things. Now it is time to
build. 43Then Laban replied to Jacob, "The daughters
are my daughters, and the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks, and all
that you see is mine. But what can I do this day to these my daughters or to their
children whom they have borne? Laban never really quite
arrived. He said to Jacob, “We need to build a monument”. Everybody brought in
these rocks and they built a heap of stones as a memorial. Laban is making the rules. Let
us make a covenant, a promise, a deal and let it be a witness between you and me.
Interestingly, he uses that “you and I” and “you and me” six times. In
our English Bibles, the order is reversed. Mine has “you and me.” Literally it
is “me and you.” Laban is emphasizing the fact that this is his idea and it is
in his interest. Our English editors wanted
to be polite. Laban is not. He is saying this is what I want. I want this heap. Then they
name it. This is the point of the
sermon. It all comes down to the name of this pile of rocks. 47Now Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha, but Jacob
called it Galeed. It means the same thing
– a witness. The difference is that Laban names it in his native tongue, Aramaic. He
is Laban the Aramean. Jacob, by the grace of God, takes a look at the heap of stones and
says no. I am not Aramaic. I am naming it Galeed, in Hebrew, my tongue. I am going back to
the promised land of the God of Abraham and I am leaving this behind. Laban, you can call
it what you want, name it in Aramaic. I will no longer honor and respect that as my
language. I am naming it in Hebrew and I am taking this family God has given. They parted ways in a
definitive sense. Here is what the monument means. “May the Lord be a witness between
you and me” -- and they both understand it -- I don’t trust you
and you don’t trust me. So may God put this symbolic barrier between the two of us so
you cannot come back and harm me and I will not come over and harm you. Because we do not
trust each other. Jacob said fine, let’s
shake on it and they did. That monument is a witness between the two of them, separating
the two of them. The old has been left behind in Aramaic. Jacob is turning and embracing
the new, symbolized by his Hebrew name for that pile of rocks. No, they do not trust one
another. This is an altar of mistrust in one another. A healthy thing it is because we
cannot trust that from which God has saved us. We cannot trust that from which God has
removed us. The apostle Paul in the 6th
chapter of Romans is arguing to convince his readers that they need to leave their old
lives and move on into a new one, that they no longer have to serve sin. Now they are
equipped to serve righteousness and the God of heaven because the Holy Spirit lives within
them. In the course of his argument , Paul asks a rhetorical question. This is a good
question for anyone who would trust people or places or things from which God has brought
them. Romans 6:21 What draw is there? What
benefit did you realize from those things of which you are now ashamed? There is no
benefit. Nothing but detriment. Come away, he is saying. Built the altar of mistrust if
you must but come away. Isaac Watts put it this
way in his wonderful hymn, “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?” when he wrote: Are there no foes for me to face? No. It is an enemy to grace. Leave it behind. Draw the line. Build the altar. Change the language. Move on. Take your family and move on. God is calling you not just to a different place, but to a higher place in His economy, that of His kingdom. Our hearts from the old life, our passions, our companions, our economics, our politics, our education, our religion, all this from the old life, God helps erase. Move on to God Himself. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2005, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |