1 00:00:00,049 --> 00:00:04,199 Pastor Josh: All right, so turn in your Bibles to Genesis 29 today. 2 00:00:04,319 --> 00:00:05,309 Genesis 29. 3 00:00:05,309 --> 00:00:09,419 This sermon is titled "The Girl Nobody Wanted." 4 00:00:11,732 --> 00:00:12,931 Relationships are hard. 5 00:00:13,841 --> 00:00:14,982 Relationships are hard. 6 00:00:15,021 --> 00:00:19,965 Thinking about my parents' fiftieth anniversary party lately. 7 00:00:20,625 --> 00:00:23,615 It was an amazing day, wonderful celebration. 8 00:00:24,425 --> 00:00:28,565 There was no extravagant declarations or grand gestures that day. 9 00:00:28,595 --> 00:00:31,625 Instead, there were paper plates and laughter that sometimes sounded 10 00:00:31,625 --> 00:00:37,215 like the edge of crying, an air of persistence and ordinary endurance. 11 00:00:37,265 --> 00:00:39,495 Even the punch felt well-worn. 12 00:00:40,175 --> 00:00:43,735 Fifty years, more than half a century of sharing the same bedroom and 13 00:00:43,735 --> 00:00:47,285 the same bills and the phone calls from mutual friends and relatives. 14 00:00:48,195 --> 00:00:51,825 I looked at my parents, who in their photo from nineteen seventy-six looked 15 00:00:51,825 --> 00:00:56,735 impossibly young, and I realized that their marriage had been grafted together 16 00:00:56,745 --> 00:01:02,615 over decades of small defeats and small mercies, arguments over money and 17 00:01:02,615 --> 00:01:07,085 the right way to load the dishwasher, mutual silences, and sometimes the 18 00:01:07,085 --> 00:01:09,025 stillness of side-by-side reading. 19 00:01:09,835 --> 00:01:13,875 I saw in their story the truth that relationships are hard and 20 00:01:13,875 --> 00:01:17,895 maybe always have been, and that the fairy tale was never the point, 21 00:01:18,495 --> 00:01:21,875 but something far deeper was. 22 00:01:22,685 --> 00:01:26,455 Now we invest in relationships, and some of us do it in the way we might 23 00:01:26,455 --> 00:01:31,025 invest in a house or a business or a body we hope will carry us into 24 00:01:31,025 --> 00:01:32,935 the future for a good long time. 25 00:01:33,884 --> 00:01:39,445 Now time is the obvious investment, but there's also emotional capital, attention, 26 00:01:39,495 --> 00:01:41,805 the subtle siphoning of inner resources. 27 00:01:42,285 --> 00:01:46,345 We buy gifts or make apologies or keep our mouths shut, each an 28 00:01:46,345 --> 00:01:48,545 investment with an expected return. 29 00:01:49,095 --> 00:01:54,595 There's energy too, which might be harder to quantify, but is easier to feel. 30 00:01:55,265 --> 00:02:00,205 The emotional labor of managing another person's moods and needs, the mental 31 00:02:00,205 --> 00:02:03,945 gymnastics required to remember to pick up the milk on the way home or to 32 00:02:03,955 --> 00:02:05,865 make it to the dance recital on time. 33 00:02:06,465 --> 00:02:09,775 Sometimes, when we're lucky, the ROI is high. 34 00:02:09,955 --> 00:02:14,385 Our gestures are reciprocated, our devotion returned in kind, and we feel 35 00:02:14,385 --> 00:02:16,605 the rare click of mutual understanding. 36 00:02:17,155 --> 00:02:19,535 Sometimes, though, the investment is a sunken cost. 37 00:02:19,545 --> 00:02:25,295 The other person is distracted or cold or gone, or maybe just contrary 38 00:02:25,295 --> 00:02:28,885 in a way that makes your energy seem like water poured into sand. 39 00:02:29,585 --> 00:02:31,255 Sometimes they just never call back. 40 00:02:31,895 --> 00:02:35,615 Parents, siblings, spouses, friends, no relationship is immune. 41 00:02:35,625 --> 00:02:38,095 The math is complicated and imprecise. 42 00:02:38,845 --> 00:02:41,655 Then there are the big relationships. 43 00:02:41,945 --> 00:02:44,765 There are some relationships that our souls are tied to, like 44 00:02:44,765 --> 00:02:48,585 a buoy, and the movement of one affects the whole inner ocean. 45 00:02:48,895 --> 00:02:49,845 You know the people. 46 00:02:49,845 --> 00:02:51,075 When they're up, you float. 47 00:02:51,454 --> 00:02:53,725 When they sink, you're dragged down. 48 00:02:54,375 --> 00:02:57,745 I think most of the time we're not aware of it, just as the ocean is not 49 00:02:57,745 --> 00:02:59,855 aware of the moon, but still moves. 50 00:02:59,995 --> 00:03:04,075 And so when the tide goes out, when the relationship isn't working or the other 51 00:03:04,075 --> 00:03:08,205 person is suffering, or even worse, simply indifferent to you, the emptiness 52 00:03:08,205 --> 00:03:11,755 is not a little thing, but a chasm. 53 00:03:12,335 --> 00:03:15,735 You find yourself longing for their approval or attention, measuring your 54 00:03:15,735 --> 00:03:17,535 worth in units of their affection. 55 00:03:17,965 --> 00:03:22,865 Their words or their silence can define your day or your whole decade. 56 00:03:23,405 --> 00:03:27,255 The tether is so strong that you can't tell where you end and they begin, 57 00:03:27,255 --> 00:03:32,575 and sometimes you wake up to realize you were only ever an appendage to 58 00:03:32,575 --> 00:03:35,215 someone else's ambitions or pathologies. 59 00:03:35,695 --> 00:03:38,895 So we begin to find that our happiness and wholeness, our sense of value and 60 00:03:38,895 --> 00:03:43,725 significance is tied to these relationship in ways that we can't always name. 61 00:03:44,055 --> 00:03:47,395 We sense the loss of freedom, but also a loss of self. 62 00:03:47,395 --> 00:03:52,105 There's a kind of spiritual inertia that keeps us moving toward the hope that if 63 00:03:52,105 --> 00:03:57,925 we can finally find the right relationship or fix the broken one, then we will 64 00:03:57,935 --> 00:04:01,825 be made whole and the ache will stop. 65 00:04:02,265 --> 00:04:05,815 Sometimes I think people are really just walking wounds, searching for 66 00:04:05,815 --> 00:04:09,805 the thing that will scab over and heal them entirely, even if that means 67 00:04:09,805 --> 00:04:11,345 letting someone else stitch them up. 68 00:04:11,815 --> 00:04:16,024 And sometimes the search is desperate, reckless, and doomed, which is why the 69 00:04:16,024 --> 00:04:20,464 world is full of people who marry the wrong person, or cling to a parent who 70 00:04:20,464 --> 00:04:25,370 never loved them properly, or chase after the friend who only texts back at two AM 71 00:04:25,370 --> 00:04:27,770 when they're bored or lonely or drunk. 72 00:04:28,370 --> 00:04:32,760 And even if we are blessed, even if the relationship is good, there's 73 00:04:32,770 --> 00:04:37,010 still the slow erosion of routine and disappointment, the slow leak of 74 00:04:37,020 --> 00:04:39,460 the ideal into the merely adequate. 75 00:04:40,170 --> 00:04:44,920 Even in the previous century, we painted marriage and family as the apex of 76 00:04:44,920 --> 00:04:50,240 existence, the white picket fence, the reward for survival, the existential 77 00:04:50,250 --> 00:04:52,000 dangers of the twentieth century. 78 00:04:52,580 --> 00:04:54,580 I remember when I was eleven, my neighbor's house 79 00:04:54,620 --> 00:04:56,300 literally had a white fence. 80 00:04:56,450 --> 00:05:00,780 The couple who lived there hated each other, but they kept the fence pristine. 81 00:05:01,640 --> 00:05:06,030 in the 1950s and '60s, American Christianity stepped in to sanctify 82 00:05:06,030 --> 00:05:10,430 the arrangement, offering a gospel of domestic contentment thinly 83 00:05:10,440 --> 00:05:12,250 veiled as spiritual achievement. 84 00:05:12,680 --> 00:05:16,450 The sermons were about being a better spouse or a better parent, and there was 85 00:05:16,450 --> 00:05:22,110 a tacit assumption that the family is not just one good thing among many, but 86 00:05:22,110 --> 00:05:24,190 the thing that makes life really matter. 87 00:05:24,530 --> 00:05:31,400 uh, but, but the Bible that they were preaching those things out of is 88 00:05:31,430 --> 00:05:38,110 actually the most unsentimental of all books, totally realistic about life and 89 00:05:38,110 --> 00:05:39,740 about the people who try to live it. 90 00:05:40,070 --> 00:05:43,659 It is full of betrayals and disappointments and the kind of pain 91 00:05:43,659 --> 00:05:47,740 that makes you wonder why anyone would choose to be in a relationship ever again. 92 00:05:48,190 --> 00:05:51,850 There are passages that make you wonder how anyone survived their own families. 93 00:05:51,960 --> 00:05:55,070 you see the marriages that are transactional, the parents who play 94 00:05:55,070 --> 00:05:58,760 favorites, the friends who turn on each other when it's expedient. 95 00:05:59,040 --> 00:06:02,700 You see the sons who hate their fathers, and the wives who are disposable, and 96 00:06:02,700 --> 00:06:04,280 the mothers who will never be enough. 97 00:06:04,530 --> 00:06:08,960 If you look closely, you realize that our best stories about relationships 98 00:06:08,960 --> 00:06:15,120 are actually stories about failure and what happens next after that brokenness. 99 00:06:15,580 --> 00:06:18,430 You see, relationships are not only hard, they were never designed to 100 00:06:18,430 --> 00:06:22,790 hold the weight of our wanting, the means of our ultimate fulfillment. 101 00:06:23,260 --> 00:06:27,520 and if these are the places we get significance and worth, then we are 102 00:06:27,540 --> 00:06:31,720 always at risk because the entire structure can collapse at any moment. 103 00:06:32,250 --> 00:06:37,690 I think about the way people chase love or approval or just the affirmation that 104 00:06:37,690 --> 00:06:40,040 they are not a ghost in their own story. 105 00:06:40,590 --> 00:06:45,230 We all want our presence to matter, to be acknowledged as real and valuable, and 106 00:06:45,230 --> 00:06:49,760 so we keep returning to the same wells, even when the water is brackish and old. 107 00:06:50,220 --> 00:06:53,750 Sometimes we invent new wells, new people, or new ambitions. 108 00:06:54,140 --> 00:06:58,350 Sometimes we blame the old wells for drying up and go looking for a better one. 109 00:06:58,890 --> 00:07:02,980 But the underlying thirst is never fully satisfied, which is 110 00:07:02,980 --> 00:07:08,890 why we can have all the right relationships and still feel alone. 111 00:07:08,900 --> 00:07:14,810 Now, the Bible is unsentimental, and it says it's really hard and devastating 112 00:07:14,810 --> 00:07:19,270 to be married, and it's really hard and devastating to not be married. 113 00:07:19,710 --> 00:07:23,230 It's wonderful to be a parent, and it's heartbreaking to be a parent. 114 00:07:23,750 --> 00:07:29,454 Relationships are great and joyous and also truly difficult and filled with pain. 115 00:07:30,562 --> 00:07:32,162 So how do we walk through this? 116 00:07:32,662 --> 00:07:36,512 How do we set our feet on the ground, cup the mug of cooling coffee in 117 00:07:36,512 --> 00:07:39,502 our hands, and hold the gaze of our spouse, our children, our friends, 118 00:07:39,842 --> 00:07:44,942 knowing full well that they see the ordinary, the unimpressive, the not 119 00:07:44,942 --> 00:07:49,572 good enough, and still expect ourselves to keep going, to keep loving, to 120 00:07:49,572 --> 00:07:52,232 keep showing up at the dinner table? 121 00:07:52,882 --> 00:07:55,922 How do we live in a culture that tells us not only that we're supposed to 122 00:07:55,922 --> 00:07:59,022 have it all, but also to want it all? 123 00:07:59,872 --> 00:08:03,982 How do we survive the ceaseless comparison, the spiritual arms race 124 00:08:04,222 --> 00:08:09,372 in which every relationship is another silent referendum on our lack, our 125 00:08:09,372 --> 00:08:13,952 visible and invisible scars, our ragged inability to play the part 126 00:08:14,452 --> 00:08:16,602 we were auditioned for from birth? 127 00:08:17,212 --> 00:08:22,082 So let's go to our text, Genesis twenty-nine verse one. 128 00:08:22,652 --> 00:08:28,972 "Then Jacob went on his journey and came to the land of the people of the East." 129 00:08:29,932 --> 00:08:33,381 Now, we're just jumping into the middle of this story, but you have to 130 00:08:33,381 --> 00:08:38,131 know a little bit of background about Jacob and the family he came from. 131 00:08:38,852 --> 00:08:44,812 This family, Jacob's family, Jacob's grandparents, was a family chosen by 132 00:08:44,812 --> 00:08:47,062 grace and a family filled with brokenness. 133 00:08:47,072 --> 00:08:50,612 Both those things are one hundred percent true. 134 00:08:51,482 --> 00:08:56,932 They are told, Abraham, that one of his descendants will one day be the 135 00:08:56,932 --> 00:09:01,512 Messiah to come and to rescue the world. 136 00:09:01,842 --> 00:09:05,982 One of your children in each generation, he's told, will be the 137 00:09:05,982 --> 00:09:10,392 head of the family, and the promise from God passed down to the next. 138 00:09:10,612 --> 00:09:13,942 And so the promise of the coming Messiah will be passed down to the next 139 00:09:13,942 --> 00:09:17,582 generation and the next generation, because one day, one of those children 140 00:09:17,582 --> 00:09:22,422 will carry on the seed, and one day the true prophet will come, the true priest 141 00:09:22,422 --> 00:09:24,462 will come, and the true king will come. 142 00:09:24,462 --> 00:09:27,942 One seed one day will be the seed. 143 00:09:28,422 --> 00:09:32,222 So one hundred percent it's a family chosen by grace. 144 00:09:32,752 --> 00:09:35,142 It was also a family filled with brokenness. 145 00:09:35,612 --> 00:09:43,732 Abraham had one son he recognized, Isaac, and God gave Rebecca and Isaac 146 00:09:43,802 --> 00:09:49,422 a prophecy that said the elder will serve the younger regarding their own 147 00:09:49,422 --> 00:09:53,286 children That's the seed, the younger. 148 00:09:53,696 --> 00:10:00,186 But Isaac favors Esau, the older, and as a result, devastation 149 00:10:00,196 --> 00:10:01,586 happens upon the family. 150 00:10:02,296 --> 00:10:06,996 Esau's means proud and strong, and Jacob, his name literally 151 00:10:06,996 --> 00:10:09,426 means heel catcher or deceiver. 152 00:10:10,126 --> 00:10:12,946 Jacob deceives Esau out of the blessing of the firstborn. 153 00:10:12,946 --> 00:10:19,716 If you remember the story, he dresses up in Esau's clothes and wears animal fur 154 00:10:19,716 --> 00:10:22,666 on his skin because, uh, Esau was hairy. 155 00:10:23,076 --> 00:10:25,566 And he makes a meal, and he goes into the dark. 156 00:10:25,626 --> 00:10:28,406 Isaac at this time is blind and can't see. 157 00:10:28,866 --> 00:10:33,036 And he calls out in the dark for the blessing, and Isaac 158 00:10:33,036 --> 00:10:35,126 says, "Is it truly you?" 159 00:10:35,126 --> 00:10:37,356 And he says, "Yes, it is me." 160 00:10:37,356 --> 00:10:40,816 And he receives that blessing of the firstborn. 161 00:10:40,816 --> 00:10:46,216 Esau comes home from hunting and finds out that Jacob has taken that 162 00:10:46,226 --> 00:10:50,696 blessing of the firstborn, and he's furious, and he vows to kill Jacob. 163 00:10:50,746 --> 00:10:54,165 So Jacob flees across the other side of the Fertile Crescent. 164 00:10:55,056 --> 00:10:57,986 He runs and he runs and runs until he can't run any longer. 165 00:10:57,986 --> 00:11:03,186 Exhausted and tired, he falls asleep and sees the ladder from 166 00:11:03,196 --> 00:11:06,266 heaven in a vision or a dream. 167 00:11:06,656 --> 00:11:09,806 God's providence is with Jacob, God's presence and provision. 168 00:11:10,796 --> 00:11:14,366 The moment Jacob stands alone beneath the unpolished vault of the night 169 00:11:14,366 --> 00:11:19,226 sky, stone under his head, fugitive and future father of the nations, 170 00:11:19,726 --> 00:11:21,566 he is not simply interrupted by God. 171 00:11:21,576 --> 00:11:26,636 He is caught, emotionally and spiritually between the failures of his past and 172 00:11:26,636 --> 00:11:28,676 the longings that thrum inside him. 173 00:11:28,996 --> 00:11:32,386 It is here in Genesis twenty-eight that Jacob's first encounter with the living 174 00:11:32,386 --> 00:11:37,165 God is not, as we might have wished, the conclusion of his inner need. 175 00:11:37,476 --> 00:11:41,556 Rather, it is the opening of a new chapter, the beginning of a slow, subtle, 176 00:11:41,556 --> 00:11:47,066 and sometimes tragic process by which his empty spaces are exposed and then, 177 00:11:47,426 --> 00:11:49,915 over years and decades, dealt with. 178 00:11:50,626 --> 00:11:54,186 When Jacob makes his covenant at Bethel, promising allegiance and devotion 179 00:11:54,186 --> 00:11:58,486 and a tenth of all he will ever own, he's not sealing a transformation. 180 00:11:58,906 --> 00:12:02,326 We should not be fooled by the high drama or the holy language. 181 00:12:02,326 --> 00:12:06,446 He is, in a way, still the same desperate, striving, incomplete man 182 00:12:06,446 --> 00:12:09,976 he was at the bottom of the ladder, clutching at dreams and bargains, 183 00:12:09,976 --> 00:12:12,596 unsure whether any of it is truly real. 184 00:12:13,046 --> 00:12:15,526 His faith is not complete just because he has a vision. 185 00:12:15,536 --> 00:12:17,426 He is a work in progress. 186 00:12:17,876 --> 00:12:20,526 The encounter with God does not instantly change him. 187 00:12:20,526 --> 00:12:24,316 It does not silence the anxious background noise of his soul. 188 00:12:24,756 --> 00:12:30,066 Instead, it brings him into a prolonged and often painful process in which he 189 00:12:30,066 --> 00:12:35,346 is forced again and again to wrestle not just with the divine, but with his own 190 00:12:35,346 --> 00:12:39,946 limitations, his own family, and with the ancient patterns of dysfunction and 191 00:12:39,946 --> 00:12:41,906 grief that both haunt and shape him. 192 00:12:42,165 --> 00:12:43,746 He is a work in progress. 193 00:12:44,286 --> 00:12:47,156 So a little background, and then again, we come to verse one of 194 00:12:47,156 --> 00:12:48,926 our chapter, chapter twenty-nine. 195 00:12:49,266 --> 00:12:51,066 "Then Jacob went on his journey." 196 00:12:51,426 --> 00:12:55,056 Literally, in the Hebrew, it says, "Then Jacob went on his feet," and 197 00:12:55,056 --> 00:12:59,306 the idea behind it is that he's light-footed and that he has this 198 00:12:59,356 --> 00:13:02,906 positive anticipation of what God can do. 199 00:13:02,916 --> 00:13:04,736 He has just had this encounter. 200 00:13:05,086 --> 00:13:11,696 Now, he runs into the future excited about what God is going to do in his life. 201 00:13:11,706 --> 00:13:16,216 Verse two: "As he looked, he saw a well in the field, and behold, three 202 00:13:16,216 --> 00:13:18,166 flocks of sheep laying beside it. 203 00:13:18,546 --> 00:13:21,266 For out of that well, the flocks were watered. 204 00:13:21,436 --> 00:13:23,636 The stone on the well's mouth was large." 205 00:13:24,296 --> 00:13:29,556 You see, Jacob knew by heart the way his mom, Rebecca, was found for Isaac 206 00:13:29,656 --> 00:13:36,736 at a well, in fact, at this very same well in Genesis twenty-four. 207 00:13:37,236 --> 00:13:41,924 And so the first things he sees is a well that he perhaps he thinks 208 00:13:41,924 --> 00:13:45,074 could this be the place his life comes together, the place he can 209 00:13:45,074 --> 00:13:48,594 stop running and finally rest. 210 00:13:48,614 --> 00:13:49,724 Verse three to twelve. 211 00:13:50,214 --> 00:13:53,284 and when all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the 212 00:13:53,284 --> 00:13:57,514 stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep and put the stone back 213 00:13:57,514 --> 00:13:59,234 in its place over the mouth of the well. 214 00:13:59,744 --> 00:14:02,914 Jacob said to them, "My brothers, where do you come from?" 215 00:14:03,114 --> 00:14:05,044 They said, "We are from Haran." 216 00:14:05,264 --> 00:14:08,354 He said to them, "Do you know Laban, the son of Nahor?" 217 00:14:08,384 --> 00:14:10,014 They said, "We know him." 218 00:14:10,454 --> 00:14:12,674 He said to them, "Is it well with him?" 219 00:14:12,974 --> 00:14:14,764 They said, "It is well. 220 00:14:15,214 --> 00:14:17,814 And see, Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep." 221 00:14:18,454 --> 00:14:21,364 He said, Behold, it is still high day. 222 00:14:21,644 --> 00:14:24,734 It is not time for the livestock to be gathered together. 223 00:14:24,924 --> 00:14:27,114 Water the sheep and go, pasture them. 224 00:14:27,514 --> 00:14:31,344 But they said, We cannot until all the flocks are gathered together and the stone 225 00:14:31,344 --> 00:14:32,824 is rolled from the mouth of the well. 226 00:14:32,994 --> 00:14:34,124 Then we water the sheep. 227 00:14:34,784 --> 00:14:37,704 While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father's 228 00:14:37,714 --> 00:14:39,644 sheep, for she was a shepherdess. 229 00:14:40,604 --> 00:14:44,824 Now as soon as Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Laban, his mother's brother, 230 00:14:45,084 --> 00:14:49,374 and the sheep of Laban, his mother's brother, Jacob came near and rolled the 231 00:14:49,384 --> 00:14:53,264 stone from the well's mouth and watered the flock of Laban, his mother's brother. 232 00:14:53,554 --> 00:14:55,884 Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud. 233 00:14:56,184 --> 00:15:01,294 And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's kinsman and that he was Rebekah's 234 00:15:01,294 --> 00:15:05,354 son, and she ran and told her father. 235 00:15:06,364 --> 00:15:07,844 No shepherds took time to greet him. 236 00:15:08,214 --> 00:15:11,684 When Jacob first arrived, the small circle of shepherds already at 237 00:15:11,684 --> 00:15:13,774 the well took scant notice of him. 238 00:15:14,234 --> 00:15:17,474 There were the customary nods and the barest shuffle to make space. 239 00:15:17,474 --> 00:15:22,134 Jacob, even travel-worn, was a man who bore his ambitions and 240 00:15:22,134 --> 00:15:24,074 his anxieties plain on his face. 241 00:15:24,464 --> 00:15:27,344 And perhaps they saw something in his expression that marked him as a 242 00:15:27,344 --> 00:15:32,204 man for whom every place was only a temporary station on a greater journey. 243 00:15:32,774 --> 00:15:35,974 In the valley of the east, among the rolling flocks, the dust gold 244 00:15:35,984 --> 00:15:39,634 with morning sun, people measure newcomers by the shoes that bore 245 00:15:39,634 --> 00:15:41,044 them and the questions they asked. 246 00:15:41,294 --> 00:15:44,534 Jacob, true to his nature, did not hesitate to introduce himself 247 00:15:44,834 --> 00:15:46,594 or to interrogate the customs 248 00:15:46,594 --> 00:15:46,614 The 249 00:15:50,927 --> 00:15:53,967 assembled shepherds were a lean and unimpressive lot. 250 00:15:54,337 --> 00:15:58,107 Boys barely grown, old men with skin like cracked leather. 251 00:15:58,517 --> 00:16:01,357 They were waiting, they said, for the arrival of the other flocks, 252 00:16:01,367 --> 00:16:04,945 for the communal moment when all would gather at the well. 253 00:16:05,025 --> 00:16:08,865 With a wordless lift and coordinated strain, they would roll away 254 00:16:08,865 --> 00:16:10,455 the stone covering its mouth. 255 00:16:10,865 --> 00:16:16,315 Then Jacob's attention was already strained to the edge of the horizon, 256 00:16:16,705 --> 00:16:20,725 where a dust cloud and a faint line of movement suggested a new arrival. 257 00:16:21,115 --> 00:16:25,745 She came into view, a young woman in faded blue robe perhaps, her stride 258 00:16:25,745 --> 00:16:29,965 swift and assured, hair unbound and catching glints of sunlight. 259 00:16:30,455 --> 00:16:33,775 She was, as Jacob would soon learn, Rachel, the daughter of Laban. 260 00:16:34,245 --> 00:16:37,635 Her flock followed her, bleating and unruly, and she managed them with a 261 00:16:37,635 --> 00:16:40,255 flick of her staff and a word or two. 262 00:16:40,795 --> 00:16:45,445 It was not customary for women to tend flocks, certainly not in this district. 263 00:16:45,805 --> 00:16:49,895 Jacob understood at once that Rachel was unusual, that her brothers must 264 00:16:49,895 --> 00:16:53,995 have either been dead or useless, and that her father Laban must 265 00:16:53,995 --> 00:16:57,685 rely on the most competent of his children, regardless of convention. 266 00:16:58,625 --> 00:16:59,815 The custom was to wait. 267 00:17:00,455 --> 00:17:03,555 Then a couple flocks would come, and there would be a communal 268 00:17:03,555 --> 00:17:05,244 lifting of the stone off the well. 269 00:17:05,835 --> 00:17:09,145 She stood at the edge of the assembly, the only woman among them, and Jacob was 270 00:17:09,145 --> 00:17:11,005 struck by the gravity of her presence. 271 00:17:11,415 --> 00:17:15,305 her name, he discovered quickly, meant little lamb, but she carried 272 00:17:15,305 --> 00:17:18,805 herself with none of the shyness or docility the name implied. 273 00:17:19,275 --> 00:17:22,464 The air was heavy with the scent of wool and lanolin, the churning 274 00:17:22,704 --> 00:17:25,055 restlessness of animals waiting to drink. 275 00:17:25,415 --> 00:17:29,135 And in that suspended moment before the well was open, Jacob felt the 276 00:17:29,135 --> 00:17:32,785 gears of fate click into place as if all those past deceits and 277 00:17:32,785 --> 00:17:38,285 failures had delivered him here to this parched clearing to this woman. 278 00:17:39,095 --> 00:17:42,335 If the shepherds expected Jacob to follow local routine, they 279 00:17:42,335 --> 00:17:43,615 were quickly disappointed. 280 00:17:44,065 --> 00:17:47,775 He watched Rachel as she stooped to gather the stragglers of her flock, 281 00:17:47,775 --> 00:17:49,165 and his heart leapt to his mouth. 282 00:17:49,175 --> 00:17:54,075 All the stories his mother told him of the mysterious women at wells, how his 283 00:17:54,075 --> 00:17:59,475 grandfather's servant found Rebekah this way, how water and destiny mingled 284 00:17:59,475 --> 00:18:03,705 at the mouths of cisterns flared in his memory and made his hands tremble. 285 00:18:04,045 --> 00:18:07,535 He strode to the well, brushing past the boys with a curt, "Move aside." 286 00:18:07,815 --> 00:18:12,655 The stone was broad and flat, its edges worn smooth by generations of 287 00:18:12,655 --> 00:18:17,505 hands, and it took the effort of both arms and a deep breath to budge it. 288 00:18:17,515 --> 00:18:19,265 Muscles strained against his tunic. 289 00:18:19,305 --> 00:18:23,495 Veins popped along his forearms, but he found a footing and lifted with a grunt. 290 00:18:23,515 --> 00:18:27,295 The sound of stone scraping against stone echoed out over the valley, 291 00:18:27,635 --> 00:18:29,055 and the shepherds fell silent. 292 00:18:29,365 --> 00:18:32,685 Even the sheep alert to the possibility of water crowded 293 00:18:32,685 --> 00:18:34,795 closer to the troughs and waited. 294 00:18:35,195 --> 00:18:39,935 It was not a feat beyond the capacity of the group, but for one man alone 295 00:18:39,935 --> 00:18:42,635 to do it was something else entirely. 296 00:18:43,125 --> 00:18:48,775 His actions certainly indicate that he believes God is guiding them. 297 00:18:49,175 --> 00:18:52,875 He tells the other men, "Sorry, men, ladies first." 298 00:18:53,200 --> 00:18:55,820 And when the watering was done, Jacob straightened, breathing 299 00:18:55,830 --> 00:18:57,230 hard, and faced Rachel. 300 00:18:57,410 --> 00:18:59,850 Words failed him, so he did the only thing he could. 301 00:19:00,310 --> 00:19:04,370 He reached for her hand in a gesture at once formal and trembling, kissed her. 302 00:19:04,950 --> 00:19:08,240 It was not the kiss of a lover, but of a man overcome with relief, with 303 00:19:08,260 --> 00:19:12,440 gratitude, as if some ancient lock within him had finally been sprung. 304 00:19:12,930 --> 00:19:14,750 And then without warning, the tears came. 305 00:19:14,750 --> 00:19:19,140 He wept loud, tears streaming down his face, the pent-up grief and the longing 306 00:19:19,140 --> 00:19:21,260 of years pouring out into the open air. 307 00:19:21,730 --> 00:19:25,490 Jacob knew with all the certainty of revelation that this was the 308 00:19:25,490 --> 00:19:28,120 beginning of the fulfillment of the dream he'd seen at Bethel. 309 00:19:28,680 --> 00:19:32,240 The land, the people, the woman, everything was falling into place. 310 00:19:32,550 --> 00:19:34,090 The stone was off the well. 311 00:19:34,120 --> 00:19:35,230 The water was running. 312 00:19:35,450 --> 00:19:36,770 The sheep were satisfied. 313 00:19:36,810 --> 00:19:41,130 He had found at last the first piece of his future, and it had the shape 314 00:19:41,780 --> 00:19:45,130 and scent and the eyes of Rachel. 315 00:19:46,145 --> 00:19:51,125 Verse thirteen and fourteen: As soon as Laban heard the news about 316 00:19:51,125 --> 00:19:55,525 Jacob, his sister's son, he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed 317 00:19:55,525 --> 00:19:57,005 him and brought him to his house. 318 00:19:57,445 --> 00:20:01,425 Jacob told Laban all these things, and Laban said to him, Surely 319 00:20:01,425 --> 00:20:03,445 you are my bone and my flesh." 320 00:20:03,685 --> 00:20:06,465 And he stayed with him a month. 321 00:20:07,115 --> 00:20:10,125 So Laban takes off running also, but I think for a different reason. 322 00:20:10,905 --> 00:20:13,185 I believe he had expectations of riches. 323 00:20:13,675 --> 00:20:14,125 Remember 324 00:20:14,175 --> 00:20:17,905 The last time he had seen a caravan come up from the south when Rebecca 325 00:20:17,905 --> 00:20:21,145 was taken, it was a caravan of riches. 326 00:20:21,845 --> 00:20:24,625 But when Jacob tells Laban all these things, his history with 327 00:20:24,655 --> 00:20:28,945 Esau and how he's now penniless, then Laban realized that Jacob was 328 00:20:28,945 --> 00:20:31,335 at his mercy and very exploitable 329 00:20:31,998 --> 00:20:33,338 Verse 15 to 19. 330 00:20:34,998 --> 00:20:38,428 "Then Laban said to Jacob, 'Because you are my kinsman, should you 331 00:20:38,428 --> 00:20:39,888 therefore serve me for nothing? 332 00:20:40,718 --> 00:20:42,908 Tell me, what shall your wages be?' 333 00:20:43,718 --> 00:20:47,368 Now Laban had two daughters: the name of the older was Leah, and 334 00:20:47,368 --> 00:20:49,198 the name of the younger was Rachel. 335 00:20:49,578 --> 00:20:53,878 Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. 336 00:20:54,288 --> 00:20:58,598 Jacob loved Rachel and he said, "I will serve you seven years for 337 00:20:58,598 --> 00:21:00,108 your younger daughter, Rachel." 338 00:21:00,378 --> 00:21:04,208 Laban said, "It is better that I give her to you than I should 339 00:21:04,208 --> 00:21:05,878 give her to any other man. 340 00:21:06,328 --> 00:21:07,368 Stay with me." 341 00:21:09,078 --> 00:21:13,558 You see, Laban sees the management capabilities of Jacob and all the money 342 00:21:13,588 --> 00:21:15,538 he can make because of his gift set. 343 00:21:16,198 --> 00:21:19,308 On the first evening over a rough meal of bread, dates, and salted 344 00:21:19,338 --> 00:21:24,108 curds, Laban broached the subject of labor and wages with the calculated 345 00:21:24,108 --> 00:21:26,288 innocence of a snake in wet grass. 346 00:21:26,868 --> 00:21:31,658 "You are bone of my bone and blood of my blood," he said, watching 347 00:21:31,658 --> 00:21:35,618 Jacob's hands break the bread with a practiced, almost priestly delicacy. 348 00:21:36,348 --> 00:21:41,778 "But should kin serve kin for nothing, as if worth less than a hired stranger?" 349 00:21:42,178 --> 00:21:45,398 He let the words sit between them, the silence gathering the attention 350 00:21:45,398 --> 00:21:46,818 of his daughters and wives. 351 00:21:47,908 --> 00:21:50,638 "Tell me, then what should your wage be?" 352 00:21:51,208 --> 00:21:53,508 Jacob, his mouth full, considered. 353 00:21:54,258 --> 00:21:57,948 To any other listener, the question would have seemed an act of generosity. 354 00:21:58,408 --> 00:22:04,028 But to Jacob, his entire life had been the navigation of love, rivalry, and barter. 355 00:22:04,288 --> 00:22:09,008 Hearing the question was like hearing the snap of a fox's paws in the leaves. 356 00:22:09,398 --> 00:22:12,558 A trap somewhere was concealed. 357 00:22:12,998 --> 00:22:16,248 Yet the beauty of Rachel, Laban's younger daughter, had already set 358 00:22:16,248 --> 00:22:20,408 Jacob's course as surely as a star sets the course of a night traveler. 359 00:22:20,821 --> 00:22:26,278 Laban had two daughters, our text says, and the framing of it is almost ominous. 360 00:22:26,748 --> 00:22:30,428 the older-younger sibling conflict is immediately introduced. 361 00:22:30,664 --> 00:22:35,274 Leah, we're told in verse 17 that her eyes were weak, and in the original, 362 00:22:35,314 --> 00:22:37,124 uh, the word is hard to translate. 363 00:22:37,124 --> 00:22:38,964 It means fragile or breakable. 364 00:22:39,024 --> 00:22:41,574 Not their sight, but their appearance. 365 00:22:41,574 --> 00:22:47,794 It doesn't mean how she saw was fragile or weak or breakable, but how she looked. 366 00:22:47,864 --> 00:22:50,444 No fire or glow in her eyes. 367 00:22:50,894 --> 00:22:54,944 Leah, whose name in Hebrew meant weary one or delicate. 368 00:22:55,484 --> 00:22:59,394 But the word itself was ambiguous, and the local dialects did nothing to clarify. 369 00:22:59,394 --> 00:23:04,484 Some said it evoked fragility as if her body or her soul were easily injured. 370 00:23:04,804 --> 00:23:09,584 Others and sisters had implied a translucence, a lack of fire, a pale and 371 00:23:09,584 --> 00:23:13,014 dimmed beauty that could not withstand the company of a brighter flame. 372 00:23:14,034 --> 00:23:18,364 Leah's eyes set wide apart were the first thing anyone noticed about her, 373 00:23:18,784 --> 00:23:20,744 not because they flashed or sparkled. 374 00:23:21,554 --> 00:23:25,624 You see, you have to understand her beauty is contrasted with Rachel's beauty. 375 00:23:26,364 --> 00:23:30,694 She moved in Rachel's shadow, always half a pace behind her sister, silent 376 00:23:31,224 --> 00:23:34,724 in most conversations and quick to lower her gaze when spoken to. 377 00:23:35,204 --> 00:23:38,124 She was the kind of woman people looked through in a crowd or forgot 378 00:23:38,124 --> 00:23:39,924 existed the moment they turned away. 379 00:23:40,514 --> 00:23:45,744 Years of this kind of invisibility had marked her, though not in any obvious way. 380 00:23:46,284 --> 00:23:50,104 She was not ugly in the sense that children and old men would wince at the 381 00:23:50,104 --> 00:23:54,484 sight of her, but there was no brightness in her face, no catching the eye. 382 00:23:55,084 --> 00:23:58,504 There were nights when if Leah sat for too long by herself, she imagined 383 00:23:58,504 --> 00:24:00,124 the outlines of her own future. 384 00:24:00,734 --> 00:24:06,024 A life spent in the tent of her father or, if fortune favored, as a wife to 385 00:24:06,024 --> 00:24:09,344 some indifferent stranger whose primary concern would be the value of her 386 00:24:09,344 --> 00:24:12,294 dowry and her ability to bear sons. 387 00:24:12,944 --> 00:24:16,794 Leah was unattractive, and she grew up in the shadow of a stunning beauty. 388 00:24:17,374 --> 00:24:19,994 Leah is the unwanted one. 389 00:24:20,424 --> 00:24:23,034 Leah is the one people looked right through. 390 00:24:23,464 --> 00:24:25,944 Leah has been ignored for years and years. 391 00:24:26,784 --> 00:24:31,224 Laban has to unload Leah, or he's going to be stuck with her forever. 392 00:24:31,234 --> 00:24:36,034 So he's got two problems: how to get rich off of Jacob and his giftings, 393 00:24:36,394 --> 00:24:38,124 but also how to pawn off Leah. 394 00:24:38,774 --> 00:24:42,174 Laban says, "I will never be able to marry this woman off, and 395 00:24:42,174 --> 00:24:43,934 she'll be a burden all my life." 396 00:24:44,854 --> 00:24:46,884 But Rachel was the opposite in every way. 397 00:24:47,504 --> 00:24:51,094 If Leah was a curtain, Rachel was a window. 398 00:24:51,534 --> 00:24:55,464 People remembered her face after a single glance, and the memory burned for days. 399 00:24:55,664 --> 00:24:58,894 Her laughter drew men's eyes and made them restless. 400 00:24:59,244 --> 00:25:03,084 Her step was light and her manner, even among the elders, suggested that the 401 00:25:03,084 --> 00:25:05,174 world was a story meant for her telling. 402 00:25:05,744 --> 00:25:09,434 Laban, pragmatic to the point of cruelty, had always known there would 403 00:25:09,444 --> 00:25:11,554 be no difficulty marrying off Rachel. 404 00:25:11,614 --> 00:25:14,444 Leah, in contrast, he assumed, would be a permanent fixture. 405 00:25:14,844 --> 00:25:18,504 Perhaps a nurse to his grandsons, or if things went particularly well, 406 00:25:18,814 --> 00:25:21,904 a second or a third wife to some neighboring herdsman desperate for 407 00:25:21,904 --> 00:25:26,674 help with the flocks and unconcerned with the finer points of female allure. 408 00:25:27,474 --> 00:25:29,534 Jacob was, in Laban's eyes, a godsend. 409 00:25:29,834 --> 00:25:34,424 Here was a man not only drenched with the wild luck of the wandering patriarchs, but 410 00:25:34,424 --> 00:25:37,664 also a man with dazzling practical skills. 411 00:25:38,044 --> 00:25:41,154 Within weeks, Laban's flocks had begun to multiply at a rate that 412 00:25:41,154 --> 00:25:45,934 seemed, even to the more skeptical villagers, a sign or a blessing. 413 00:25:46,374 --> 00:25:50,884 The little calves calved earlier, the lambs survived longer, the wool 414 00:25:50,884 --> 00:25:54,404 came in thicker and brighter, and through it all, Jacob's tireless 415 00:25:54,424 --> 00:25:59,004 presence was felt in every field, every corral, every household ledger. 416 00:25:59,378 --> 00:26:01,318 Laban could see that Jacob loved Rachel. 417 00:26:01,318 --> 00:26:04,898 He offered seven years to serve for Rachel. 418 00:26:05,278 --> 00:26:08,368 When Jacob says, "I will work for seven years," Laban says, 419 00:26:09,048 --> 00:26:11,818 "Hmm, I think I got this guy. 420 00:26:12,048 --> 00:26:14,908 Here is a guy who will do anything for this girl." 421 00:26:15,478 --> 00:26:19,718 Jacob messed up because in Laban he has finally met his match. 422 00:26:19,978 --> 00:26:23,008 You never reveal what your weakness is to a con artist. 423 00:26:23,468 --> 00:26:27,578 Now notice very carefully, Laban never says yes, though Jacob heard yes. 424 00:26:28,168 --> 00:26:31,128 Twice the dowry price for a bride, given the wages of the day. 425 00:26:31,438 --> 00:26:35,048 Three years would be good, and four years would be extravagant. 426 00:26:35,648 --> 00:26:39,648 Better that I give her to you, but he didn't say yes. 427 00:26:40,088 --> 00:26:44,588 When Jacob, in his desperate lovesick way, blurted out that he would 428 00:26:44,588 --> 00:26:48,738 serve seven years for the hand of Rachel, Laban did not even blink. 429 00:26:48,848 --> 00:26:52,158 He smiled, nodded, and said, "It is better that I give her 430 00:26:52,158 --> 00:26:54,478 to you than to another man. 431 00:26:54,568 --> 00:26:55,468 Stay with me." 432 00:26:56,058 --> 00:26:59,178 But he left the terms vague, left the promise to float in the air like 433 00:26:59,178 --> 00:27:01,188 the last smoke of a burned-out fire. 434 00:27:01,598 --> 00:27:05,288 It was a master stroke of non-committal commitment. 435 00:27:05,888 --> 00:27:09,708 Jacob, with his head so full of Rachel's face that he could barely sleep at night, 436 00:27:09,918 --> 00:27:14,598 heard only what he wanted to hear: a clear and binding agreement and the certainty of 437 00:27:14,598 --> 00:27:17,418 love's reward at the end of honest labor. 438 00:27:17,428 --> 00:27:20,538 But Laban actually never said yes. 439 00:27:20,798 --> 00:27:24,118 He never set his seal to any document, never called the elders 440 00:27:24,118 --> 00:27:27,628 to witness, never spoke the words aloud in the presence of the women. 441 00:27:27,778 --> 00:27:33,978 He led Jacob on, but he could come back and say, "Read the fine print." 442 00:27:34,948 --> 00:27:38,558 Verse twenty and twenty-one: So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and 443 00:27:38,558 --> 00:27:43,088 they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her. 444 00:27:43,658 --> 00:27:46,758 Then Jacob said to Laban, "Give me my wife, that I may go in to 445 00:27:46,758 --> 00:27:48,928 her, for my time is completed." 446 00:27:49,351 --> 00:27:53,041 Now this has been a problem for Jewish scholars for centuries because he's 447 00:27:53,071 --> 00:27:55,441 literally saying, "My time is complete. 448 00:27:55,461 --> 00:27:56,481 Give me my wife. 449 00:27:56,481 --> 00:27:57,701 I wanna have sex with her." 450 00:27:57,701 --> 00:28:01,181 It's so indiscreet to the story that's being told. 451 00:28:01,811 --> 00:28:04,141 But the narrator is telling us something simple. 452 00:28:04,551 --> 00:28:09,471 Jacob is a man who is overwhelmed with emotional and sexual longings for Rachel. 453 00:28:09,941 --> 00:28:11,051 Why is he this way? 454 00:28:11,511 --> 00:28:15,131 This is how he's dealing with the pain and the failure from his life. 455 00:28:15,551 --> 00:28:19,121 But Rachel is the most beautiful, and if I could get her, then this 456 00:28:19,121 --> 00:28:20,841 will finally make sense of my life. 457 00:28:20,851 --> 00:28:22,591 Then I will finally be happy. 458 00:28:22,821 --> 00:28:25,901 Then this emptiness will finally be fulfilled. 459 00:28:26,431 --> 00:28:30,761 We load a tremendous amount of spiritual freight into relationships. 460 00:28:31,201 --> 00:28:34,651 We can look to them to fix what is broken and to fill what is empty. 461 00:28:35,061 --> 00:28:36,211 Look again at the words. 462 00:28:36,221 --> 00:28:40,291 So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few 463 00:28:40,291 --> 00:28:42,251 days because the love he had for her. 464 00:28:42,741 --> 00:28:46,121 And then as soon as the wage is up, then Jacob said to Laban, 465 00:28:46,501 --> 00:28:49,511 "Give me my wife that I may go into her, for my time is completed." 466 00:28:49,561 --> 00:28:51,821 at first it reads like a fairy tale of devotion. 467 00:28:51,831 --> 00:28:55,861 Years evaporate in the presence of a true aim, and Jacob's solitary 468 00:28:55,861 --> 00:28:59,621 heart and burnt-out hope find a kindling again in the form of a 469 00:28:59,621 --> 00:29:01,571 shepherdess who stirs him awake. 470 00:29:02,011 --> 00:29:03,711 But the language is more blunt than that. 471 00:29:03,721 --> 00:29:06,301 When you look closely, it's almost embarrassing how frank 472 00:29:06,301 --> 00:29:07,771 the narrator chooses to be. 473 00:29:08,291 --> 00:29:12,021 Jacob does not say, "Now let me devote myself to Rachel for the 474 00:29:12,021 --> 00:29:15,731 rest of my days," or, "Let me honor her as my lifelong companion." 475 00:29:16,011 --> 00:29:18,821 Instead, he says, "Give me my wife that I may go into her." 476 00:29:18,821 --> 00:29:21,631 The idiom is as raw as an arrow to the eye. 477 00:29:22,151 --> 00:29:25,031 the text is not bashful about what Jacob feels. 478 00:29:25,431 --> 00:29:29,101 Robert Alter, the great Jewish translator and commenter, says that for 479 00:29:29,101 --> 00:29:32,351 centuries, Jewish writers and scholars have wrestled with the phrasing. 480 00:29:32,671 --> 00:29:34,611 The problem is not merely linguistic. 481 00:29:34,611 --> 00:29:35,981 It's almost indecent. 482 00:29:36,371 --> 00:29:39,001 The patriarch is unfiltered and urgent. 483 00:29:39,301 --> 00:29:41,671 He says, in effect, "The time for the waiting is done. 484 00:29:41,671 --> 00:29:42,651 I have earned this woman. 485 00:29:42,651 --> 00:29:43,651 Now let me have her." 486 00:29:43,941 --> 00:29:46,801 There's no poetry in this, no tender indirectness. 487 00:29:47,171 --> 00:29:53,271 Jacob is ablaze with longing, emotional, sexual, existential, and seven years 488 00:29:53,281 --> 00:29:57,680 of labor are nothing when compared to this hunger If you imagine the scene, 489 00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:01,850 you can see how Jacob's obsession, his striving, his capacity to endure 490 00:30:01,860 --> 00:30:08,240 humiliation and delay and futility are all channeled into one necessity, Rachel. 491 00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:12,180 He has made her the axis on which his private world churns. 492 00:30:12,420 --> 00:30:16,840 He has suffered decades as the afterthought, the usurper, the overlooked 493 00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:21,450 one of his own family, his mother's favorite, but not his father's. 494 00:30:21,780 --> 00:30:23,060 The second son always. 495 00:30:23,670 --> 00:30:27,600 He ran, but the void caught up with him, and so he loads all the 496 00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:31,620 freight of his past, his failures, his years of being slighted and 497 00:30:31,620 --> 00:30:34,930 second best into one hope, Rachel. 498 00:30:35,140 --> 00:30:37,220 But this is not just about Jacob and Rachel. 499 00:30:37,270 --> 00:30:41,840 the text, in its meticulous refusal to romanticize, is inviting us to look 500 00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:43,920 beneath the surface of our own hearts. 501 00:30:44,190 --> 00:30:45,830 Why is Jacob like this? 502 00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:48,000 Why do we find ourselves in him? 503 00:30:48,330 --> 00:30:53,400 What is this drive to find one person who will finally, finally make us whole? 504 00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:55,200 Think about our own lives. 505 00:30:55,350 --> 00:30:56,490 You may not be Jacob. 506 00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:59,580 You may not have run away with your brother's birthright, but you have 507 00:30:59,580 --> 00:31:03,510 likely looked at another human being and thought, "If I can have you, 508 00:31:03,810 --> 00:31:05,730 then I can never be barren again." 509 00:31:06,289 --> 00:31:11,469 If you have looked at the unattainable object of affection and believed that 510 00:31:11,479 --> 00:31:15,749 the hope for wholeness, the hope for meaning resides in union with them. 511 00:31:16,189 --> 00:31:21,609 This is the oldest form of idolatry, making a person into your God. 512 00:31:21,669 --> 00:31:26,579 This is the cult of the romantic solution, the belief that soulmate love 513 00:31:26,579 --> 00:31:28,959 will finally deliver you from the void. 514 00:31:29,439 --> 00:31:33,639 And the insidious cruelty of it is that we do not realize the weight 515 00:31:33,639 --> 00:31:35,589 we are placing on the other person. 516 00:31:35,869 --> 00:31:41,089 We do not see the way we turn a human being into an idol and an object, 517 00:31:41,299 --> 00:31:45,149 and then in the process render ourselves incapable of real love. 518 00:31:45,429 --> 00:31:50,699 Because love, true love cannot begin until we relinquish the hope that the 519 00:31:50,699 --> 00:31:54,699 other person will cure our disease. 520 00:31:55,219 --> 00:31:58,579 Jacob's story is a transparent window into this human predicament. 521 00:31:58,849 --> 00:32:00,899 He does not learn the lesson easily. 522 00:32:00,949 --> 00:32:05,309 He's so convinced that Rachel will fill what is empty in him that he 523 00:32:05,309 --> 00:32:07,519 cannot see the trap closing around him. 524 00:32:07,679 --> 00:32:11,929 Laban, the master manipulator, smells his desperation and exploits it. 525 00:32:12,139 --> 00:32:17,049 As we see, seven years becomes fourteen, and Jacob is made to serve twice over. 526 00:32:17,219 --> 00:32:21,249 He is tricked, humiliated, made the fool. 527 00:32:21,459 --> 00:32:26,839 The very thing he thought would end his pain becomes the next cycle of it. 528 00:32:27,289 --> 00:32:30,639 And when he finally wins Rachel, the old ache is not gone. 529 00:32:30,969 --> 00:32:34,189 If anything, it only multiplies. 530 00:32:34,549 --> 00:32:36,609 This is the shape of our longing. 531 00:32:37,089 --> 00:32:40,099 When we think we have found the one thing, the one person 532 00:32:40,099 --> 00:32:41,299 that will redeem us, They are 533 00:32:44,749 --> 00:32:46,119 not merely beloved. 534 00:32:46,519 --> 00:32:50,839 They are savior, redeemer, rescuer from emptiness. 535 00:32:51,149 --> 00:32:53,519 We do not enter relationships with gentle hands. 536 00:32:53,519 --> 00:32:55,999 We come starving, and we devour. 537 00:32:56,209 --> 00:33:00,229 And then in the aftermath, when the hunger is not sated, we are shocked. 538 00:33:00,709 --> 00:33:02,909 We should not be shocked. 539 00:33:03,089 --> 00:33:07,769 The text is telling us, without irony and without flinching, that 540 00:33:07,779 --> 00:33:11,899 this is the cycle of humanity. 541 00:33:12,679 --> 00:33:14,069 verse twenty-two to twenty-eight. 542 00:33:14,079 --> 00:33:17,549 So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. 543 00:33:17,979 --> 00:33:21,629 But in the evening, he took his daughter Leah and brought her 544 00:33:21,629 --> 00:33:24,139 to Jacob, and he went into her. 545 00:33:24,669 --> 00:33:28,659 Laban gave his female servant Zilpah and his daughter Leah to be his servant. 546 00:33:29,069 --> 00:33:33,639 And in the morning, behold, it was Leah. 547 00:33:34,309 --> 00:33:37,039 And Jacob said to Laban, "What is this that you've done to me? 548 00:33:37,069 --> 00:33:39,309 Did I not serve with you for Rachel? 549 00:33:39,549 --> 00:33:41,159 Why then have you deceived me?" 550 00:33:41,689 --> 00:33:44,629 Laban said, "It is not so done in our country to give the 551 00:33:44,629 --> 00:33:46,199 younger before the firstborn. 552 00:33:46,809 --> 00:33:51,429 Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return 553 00:33:51,439 --> 00:33:53,609 for serving me another seven years." 554 00:33:54,249 --> 00:33:57,099 Jacob did so and completed her week. 555 00:33:57,439 --> 00:34:01,689 Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. 556 00:34:03,547 --> 00:34:09,806 So Laban complies to the whole arrangement and hosts the wedding feast. 557 00:34:10,337 --> 00:34:12,967 Now these wedding feasts, they begin on the first day. 558 00:34:12,967 --> 00:34:16,327 There would be a procession to and from the bride's dwelling, the reading 559 00:34:16,327 --> 00:34:19,827 of the marriage covenant that applied to them, and then a large feast 560 00:34:19,837 --> 00:34:23,516 that was attended by the families and people from the community. 561 00:34:23,516 --> 00:34:28,016 And as the first day's festivities came to an end, the groom would wrap his cloak 562 00:34:28,016 --> 00:34:32,007 around the bride, take her to his tent where the marriage was then consummated, 563 00:34:32,047 --> 00:34:34,237 and then six more days of feasting. 564 00:34:35,056 --> 00:34:39,007 It was late by the time Laban announced to the guest with a voice made hoarse 565 00:34:39,007 --> 00:34:43,027 by excitement that the bride and the groom would take their leave. 566 00:34:43,387 --> 00:34:47,976 The crowd roared approval, and Jacob was led to the bridal tent by a knot 567 00:34:47,976 --> 00:34:51,907 of laughing men, his arms stretched open, ready to embrace the future he 568 00:34:51,907 --> 00:34:54,437 had purchased with seven years of toil. 569 00:34:54,927 --> 00:34:59,027 The tent was hung with heavy fabrics and lit by a single guttering oil lamp. 570 00:34:59,607 --> 00:35:03,387 In the center, swathed in the veil and the white linen of a bride sat 571 00:35:03,387 --> 00:35:05,277 the woman who had haunted his dreams. 572 00:35:05,847 --> 00:35:08,935 He whispered her name, Rachel, as he drew her to him. 573 00:35:09,185 --> 00:35:11,125 He whispered it again and again. 574 00:35:11,135 --> 00:35:13,722 The rest of the world, the feasting, the pastures, the 575 00:35:13,722 --> 00:35:15,632 very stars overhead fell away. 576 00:35:16,012 --> 00:35:19,382 There was only this night and this woman and the promise 577 00:35:19,422 --> 00:35:21,092 that would not let him rest. 578 00:35:21,532 --> 00:35:25,302 outside the noise of revelry dissolved into the slow animal sounds of sleep. 579 00:35:25,672 --> 00:35:29,442 Inside, Jacob and his bride lay together, and it was not until the 580 00:35:29,442 --> 00:35:34,202 sun laced gold through the edge of the tent that the spell began to dissolve. 581 00:35:34,582 --> 00:35:40,112 He woke content and rolled over to gather Rachel in his arms, only to 582 00:35:40,112 --> 00:35:46,012 see in the new light a pair of soft, frightened eyes that were not hers. 583 00:35:46,972 --> 00:35:49,632 Now Laban used the veil because all brides were veiled, and the 584 00:35:49,632 --> 00:35:54,082 lateness of the night and the much wine to pull the swipe on Jacob. 585 00:35:54,862 --> 00:35:56,512 Not sure what happened to Rachel. 586 00:35:56,922 --> 00:35:59,172 Leah in a sense, had to be a willing bride. 587 00:35:59,182 --> 00:36:03,042 She must have had a love for Jacob somewhat and despised 588 00:36:03,062 --> 00:36:04,632 the situation she was in. 589 00:36:05,132 --> 00:36:08,172 So in the morning, he wakes to the glow of the sun illuminating 590 00:36:08,172 --> 00:36:11,662 his tent, and he looks over on his beloved, and behold, it was Leah. 591 00:36:11,952 --> 00:36:13,352 Surely he cries out. 592 00:36:13,822 --> 00:36:17,422 he had whispered her sister's name dozens of times in the night, and she 593 00:36:17,422 --> 00:36:19,272 had passionately went along with it. 594 00:36:19,752 --> 00:36:21,502 The marriage has been consummated. 595 00:36:21,502 --> 00:36:22,852 There is no going back. 596 00:36:23,182 --> 00:36:26,792 The betrayal, the embarrassment, the anger. 597 00:36:27,002 --> 00:36:28,422 So he goes to Laban. 598 00:36:28,892 --> 00:36:31,422 How did Laban think he was going to get away with this? 599 00:36:32,052 --> 00:36:35,072 I mean, Jacob recoiled as if bitten when that morning light 600 00:36:35,072 --> 00:36:36,282 came streaming through the tent. 601 00:36:36,292 --> 00:36:39,562 He sat up, voice strangled, and demanded an explanation. 602 00:36:39,842 --> 00:36:43,252 The morning was split by his anger, and he stormed from the tent, robes 603 00:36:43,252 --> 00:36:46,532 askew, and burst into the courtyard where Laban was already waiting, 604 00:36:46,862 --> 00:36:48,672 eyes bright with anticipation. 605 00:36:49,132 --> 00:36:50,862 "What is this that you've done to me?" 606 00:36:50,862 --> 00:36:51,782 Jacob cried. 607 00:36:52,252 --> 00:36:53,972 Laban did not flinch. 608 00:36:54,822 --> 00:37:01,832 Why, when Laban says what he says to Jacob, does Jacob just quietly give in? 609 00:37:02,232 --> 00:37:05,672 What shuts Jacob down on such a level? 610 00:37:06,202 --> 00:37:15,382 Literally, in Hebrew, Laban says to Jacob, "Well, around here, It's not the custom 611 00:37:15,462 --> 00:37:18,312 to put the younger before the older." 612 00:37:18,572 --> 00:37:22,792 And suddenly his heart was cut. 613 00:37:23,042 --> 00:37:26,942 Because when Jacob said, "Why did you deceive me?" 614 00:37:27,002 --> 00:37:31,312 It's the same word Isaac used to Jacob. 615 00:37:31,462 --> 00:37:34,382 "Why did you deceive me? 616 00:37:35,382 --> 00:37:39,572 I called your name in the dark, and you responded. 617 00:37:39,902 --> 00:37:42,632 I reached out, and you were there." 618 00:37:42,932 --> 00:37:48,652 And Jacob suddenly realized the same thing he pulled on the father that 619 00:37:48,652 --> 00:37:55,362 he desperately wanted approval from had now just been pulled on him, and 620 00:37:55,372 --> 00:37:58,012 he has nothing he can say to that 621 00:38:00,042 --> 00:38:04,072 he's doing exactly what Jacob did to his father. 622 00:38:04,152 --> 00:38:08,542 I reached out in the dark thinking it was somebody that it wasn't, just as 623 00:38:08,542 --> 00:38:11,922 my father reached out in the dark and thought it was somebody it wasn't. 624 00:38:12,362 --> 00:38:14,082 And the fury dies on his lips. 625 00:38:14,082 --> 00:38:18,352 He returned to Laban, who was already outlining terms of the new agreement. 626 00:38:18,352 --> 00:38:21,272 Serve another seven years and Rachel would be his as well. 627 00:38:21,662 --> 00:38:24,882 Jacob nodded, numb by repetition, and went back to the tent where 628 00:38:24,882 --> 00:38:28,632 Leah waited, her face a map of all the ways a heart could be broken. 629 00:38:29,152 --> 00:38:31,792 The wedding week continued, as was the custom. 630 00:38:31,792 --> 00:38:36,402 There were more processions, more songs, and now two brides, each with her 631 00:38:36,402 --> 00:38:38,632 own circle of silent, watchful women. 632 00:38:39,052 --> 00:38:42,572 Jacob was polite to Leah, but she saw the way he looked past 633 00:38:42,572 --> 00:38:43,972 her toward the woman he loved. 634 00:38:44,342 --> 00:38:47,552 Each night, Leah lay awake, counting the hours until morning, 635 00:38:47,922 --> 00:38:51,212 measuring the distance between her and the man she called husband. 636 00:38:51,762 --> 00:38:54,552 when the week was over, Laban gathered the people again, and this 637 00:38:54,562 --> 00:38:58,762 time gave Rachel to Jacob as if she were a second course at a feast. 638 00:38:59,012 --> 00:39:02,972 There was another banquet, another bedchamber, and for seven more years 639 00:39:02,972 --> 00:39:06,892 Jacob served, his love for Rachel burning and his disappointment settling 640 00:39:06,902 --> 00:39:08,862 like silt in the bottom of his soul. 641 00:39:09,202 --> 00:39:12,932 The two sisters lived in the same house, Rachel luminous and beloved, 642 00:39:12,932 --> 00:39:15,782 Leah diligent and invisible. 643 00:39:16,642 --> 00:39:20,172 Now there's something in the text I just want you to notice that is a 644 00:39:20,232 --> 00:39:22,422 profound teaching for all of life. 645 00:39:22,862 --> 00:39:26,162 And that's the little phrase, when Jacob wakes up in the 646 00:39:26,162 --> 00:39:29,722 morning, behold, it was Leah. 647 00:39:30,182 --> 00:39:33,522 Now we love Leah and we're protective of her in the story and we'll 648 00:39:33,782 --> 00:39:35,382 come back to her in just a second. 649 00:39:35,412 --> 00:39:39,152 But she for a moment represents something very important. 650 00:39:39,662 --> 00:39:43,562 And that's the idea that finally I have the one thing that will make me whole. 651 00:39:44,242 --> 00:39:46,262 But in the morning it's always Leah. 652 00:39:46,832 --> 00:39:48,262 The world is advertised. 653 00:39:48,492 --> 00:39:51,722 Rachel is never the world is delivered. 654 00:39:52,012 --> 00:39:52,642 Leah. 655 00:39:53,392 --> 00:39:58,772 For one stunning, humiliating instant, all the passionate longing of seven 656 00:39:58,772 --> 00:40:02,482 years, the fevered expectation, the secret rehearsals of happiness and 657 00:40:02,482 --> 00:40:07,002 fulfillment, all of it crumpled and fell away in a heap of confusion and betrayal. 658 00:40:07,222 --> 00:40:11,062 Leah laid beside him, wide awake, silent witness to his disappointment, 659 00:40:11,312 --> 00:40:16,502 to her own centuries-long role as substitute, consolation prize, mistake. 660 00:40:16,872 --> 00:40:20,812 It is a moment the text dares us to see that outlives Jacob, that 661 00:40:20,852 --> 00:40:22,832 outlives Rachel, that outlives Leah. 662 00:40:23,232 --> 00:40:26,742 There is, in this deception, a distillation of what it is to be 663 00:40:26,752 --> 00:40:28,672 human and hopeful and self-deluded. 664 00:40:29,032 --> 00:40:32,482 All of us, if we're honest, have lived this scene in our own ways. 665 00:40:32,842 --> 00:40:37,682 The years of anticipation, the labor, the certainty that if only we obtain the 666 00:40:37,682 --> 00:40:43,352 object of our desire, then and only then will we be whole, happy, and filled. 667 00:40:43,772 --> 00:40:49,162 Yet always when the sun finally rises, we find in the place of our Rachel a Leah we 668 00:40:49,162 --> 00:40:51,742 never planned for and cannot quite escape. 669 00:40:52,232 --> 00:40:55,522 The object of our desire is always in the end a little less than 670 00:40:55,522 --> 00:41:00,672 we imagined, or worse, it is the opposite, the inversion, the absence 671 00:41:00,722 --> 00:41:02,652 of what we were sure would save us. 672 00:41:03,142 --> 00:41:06,892 the ancient rabbis and modern commentators alike have never quite been able to 673 00:41:06,892 --> 00:41:08,532 let go of the shock of the reveal. 674 00:41:08,922 --> 00:41:12,082 In the morning, behold, it was Leah. 675 00:41:12,922 --> 00:41:14,302 How could it be otherwise? 676 00:41:14,932 --> 00:41:18,582 The night is always thick with hope and illusion, but the morning brings 677 00:41:18,582 --> 00:41:23,122 only the truth of our own limitations and the imperfections of the world. 678 00:41:23,542 --> 00:41:27,522 Every love, every project, every accomplishment, each thing that 679 00:41:27,522 --> 00:41:32,132 we are sure will finally redeem us dissolves into the daylight into 680 00:41:32,132 --> 00:41:34,492 something slightly or massively off. 681 00:41:35,002 --> 00:41:36,972 The one we choose is not what we thought. 682 00:41:37,182 --> 00:41:40,272 The self we become is not the self we rehearsed in dreams. 683 00:41:40,592 --> 00:41:43,362 The world we inherit is not the one we were promised. 684 00:41:44,072 --> 00:41:47,002 All our Rachels become Leahs by sunrise 685 00:41:47,453 --> 00:41:51,413 The brilliant Derek Kidner writes of this, "This is a 686 00:41:51,423 --> 00:41:56,893 miniature of our disillusionment experienced from Eden onwards." 687 00:41:57,603 --> 00:42:02,213 No matter what we have hopes in, no matter what we think is 688 00:42:02,213 --> 00:42:04,603 Rachel, in the morning it's Leah. 689 00:42:04,653 --> 00:42:08,163 You go to bed with Rachel, but in the morning it's Leah. 690 00:42:08,213 --> 00:42:08,903 But what then? 691 00:42:09,673 --> 00:42:10,793 What are we to do? 692 00:42:11,213 --> 00:42:15,243 How are we to live in a world where every Rachel is destined to become Leah at dawn? 693 00:42:15,853 --> 00:42:20,073 Well, some will spend their lives discarding Leah after Leah, convinced 694 00:42:20,083 --> 00:42:24,883 that the next Rachel will be the real one, the fulfillment at last. 695 00:42:25,913 --> 00:42:30,293 Others will turn the disappointment inward, blaming themselves for the 696 00:42:30,363 --> 00:42:35,613 unbridgeable gap, convinced that they are unworthy of Rachel or anything else. 697 00:42:36,863 --> 00:42:40,633 Still others will become cynics, hardening against all hope, refusing to 698 00:42:40,643 --> 00:42:44,143 be taken in by any promise ever again. 699 00:42:45,283 --> 00:42:49,833 And a few, perhaps the wisest or simply the most broken, will come 700 00:42:49,833 --> 00:42:52,143 to see that if there is, as C.S. 701 00:42:52,143 --> 00:42:55,223 Lewis said, "a hunger in the heart that nothing in this world can 702 00:42:55,223 --> 00:43:00,943 satisfy," then perhaps we were made for another world altogether. 703 00:43:03,827 --> 00:43:05,427 And then the whole narrative shifts. 704 00:43:07,117 --> 00:43:12,877 Not only do you wake up and it's Leah, but when you wake 705 00:43:12,877 --> 00:43:15,587 up, you realize you are Leah. 706 00:43:16,557 --> 00:43:19,297 Verse thirty to thirty-four, and we'll be done. 707 00:43:20,267 --> 00:43:25,437 "So Jacob went into Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah and 708 00:43:25,437 --> 00:43:28,227 served Laban for another seven years. 709 00:43:28,737 --> 00:43:32,997 When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb. 710 00:43:33,277 --> 00:43:34,587 But Rachel was barren. 711 00:43:35,147 --> 00:43:38,347 And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben. 712 00:43:38,357 --> 00:43:41,447 For she said, 'Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction, 713 00:43:41,717 --> 00:43:43,557 for now my husband will love me.' 714 00:43:44,607 --> 00:43:48,837 She conceived again and bore a son and said, 'Because the Lord has heard that I 715 00:43:48,837 --> 00:43:51,347 am hated, he has given me this son also.' 716 00:43:51,347 --> 00:43:52,807 And she called his name Simeon. 717 00:43:53,647 --> 00:43:57,117 Again, she conceived and bore a son and said, 'Now this time my 718 00:43:57,117 --> 00:44:00,227 husband will be attached to me because I have borne three sons.' 719 00:44:00,227 --> 00:44:02,927 Therefore his name was called Levi." 720 00:44:03,667 --> 00:44:07,217 Look at what Leah has done with the brokenness and emptiness of her own heart. 721 00:44:08,557 --> 00:44:09,387 Do you notice? 722 00:44:10,227 --> 00:44:14,787 Reuben, her firstborn son, literally means to see. 723 00:44:15,517 --> 00:44:17,857 Maybe I will be visible. 724 00:44:18,197 --> 00:44:23,017 Maybe he won't just look through me any longer. 725 00:44:23,737 --> 00:44:24,817 But that doesn't happen. 726 00:44:25,547 --> 00:44:29,757 And so she has the next son, and Simeon means literally to hear. 727 00:44:29,987 --> 00:44:32,967 So she's given up on being seen, and now she just wants 728 00:44:33,007 --> 00:44:34,587 her husband to listen to her. 729 00:44:34,727 --> 00:44:37,587 Maybe finally my husband will hear me. 730 00:44:38,557 --> 00:44:39,697 But he does not listen. 731 00:44:40,577 --> 00:44:43,847 So then she has another son, and she names him Levi. 732 00:44:43,857 --> 00:44:45,677 Levi means to be attached. 733 00:44:45,817 --> 00:44:48,017 Now finally, my husband will love me. 734 00:44:48,397 --> 00:44:50,397 I'm being a perfect wife, a perfect mother. 735 00:44:50,397 --> 00:44:51,577 I'm bearing sons. 736 00:44:51,737 --> 00:44:53,577 He's gotta be attached to me. 737 00:44:54,237 --> 00:44:58,717 Maybe he doesn't wanna look at me or hear me, but, but, but he's gotta be attached. 738 00:44:58,867 --> 00:45:01,077 And according to the cultural standards of the time- 739 00:45:01,661 --> 00:45:03,271 That was what was valuable. 740 00:45:03,271 --> 00:45:06,661 If I could just have this, I would be visible and significant. 741 00:45:06,671 --> 00:45:08,461 I would be heard and held. 742 00:45:08,681 --> 00:45:10,381 This is worse than hell. 743 00:45:10,701 --> 00:45:14,711 The one person who she has put all her hope in is in the arms 744 00:45:14,711 --> 00:45:19,031 of the sister she grew up in the shadow of, and it doesn't work. 745 00:45:20,361 --> 00:45:26,251 And if she had a nicer husband, she could live in the delusion for a longer 746 00:45:26,251 --> 00:45:28,331 time, but it would still be a delusion. 747 00:45:28,331 --> 00:45:32,191 And then we get to the change, verse 35, "And she conceived again 748 00:45:32,191 --> 00:45:35,461 and bore a son and said, 'This time I will praise the Lord.' 749 00:45:36,011 --> 00:45:38,081 Therefore she called his name Judah. 750 00:45:38,491 --> 00:45:41,061 Then she ceased bearing." 751 00:45:41,751 --> 00:45:44,821 I want you to notice what God does in her. 752 00:45:45,301 --> 00:45:49,721 Notice how she's calling out, "My husband, my husband," but she's 753 00:45:49,731 --> 00:45:51,621 using the covenant name Yahweh. 754 00:45:51,631 --> 00:45:52,761 How would she know that? 755 00:45:52,761 --> 00:45:55,961 Only Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be using that word. 756 00:45:56,771 --> 00:45:59,801 Well, she's not just asking for babies, but calling out to this 757 00:45:59,811 --> 00:46:02,931 God of grace, this covenant God. 758 00:46:03,471 --> 00:46:05,151 And then there's this breakthrough. 759 00:46:05,601 --> 00:46:08,621 You see, in the darkness between the sons, Leah turns to God. 760 00:46:08,681 --> 00:46:14,221 Leah's prayers are not requests so much as eruptions, a broken dam of 761 00:46:14,221 --> 00:46:19,881 need and frustration pouring into the only void large enough to receive it. 762 00:46:20,721 --> 00:46:22,601 At the next verse, something shifts. 763 00:46:22,701 --> 00:46:24,151 The suffering is not abated. 764 00:46:24,421 --> 00:46:26,501 The shape of her hope has changed. 765 00:46:26,791 --> 00:46:30,291 "This time I will praise the Lord," she says, and she names 766 00:46:30,291 --> 00:46:35,181 her son Judah, not see, not hear, not join, not attach, but praise. 767 00:46:35,551 --> 00:46:36,211 Judah. 768 00:46:36,481 --> 00:46:38,781 This time, this time is different. 769 00:46:38,961 --> 00:46:40,381 Then she stops having children. 770 00:46:40,391 --> 00:46:42,161 I don't need to do this anymore. 771 00:46:42,381 --> 00:46:44,351 I am not going to work at it like I was. 772 00:46:44,361 --> 00:46:48,311 She took the deepest passions of her heart, she took them away from her 773 00:46:48,311 --> 00:46:51,591 husband and put them on the Lord. 774 00:46:51,831 --> 00:46:56,231 These men had been stealing her life for years, but the moment she 775 00:46:56,231 --> 00:46:58,491 did that, she took her life back. 776 00:46:58,901 --> 00:47:05,401 And we will be a lousy spouse or a parent or a child until we do that same thing. 777 00:47:05,451 --> 00:47:10,621 In this, Leah becomes a kind of patron saint for the unwanted, the overlooked, 778 00:47:10,821 --> 00:47:16,471 the ones whose lives are a long lesson in the futility of earning love. 779 00:47:16,881 --> 00:47:19,711 She is not miraculously made beautiful. 780 00:47:20,171 --> 00:47:25,611 She is not vindicated by some last-minute reversal that elevates her over Rachel. 781 00:47:25,981 --> 00:47:30,311 She does not become the subject of Jacob's undying devotion. 782 00:47:30,611 --> 00:47:36,041 None of the external circumstances change, but her story is a slow, 783 00:47:36,251 --> 00:47:41,221 almost imperceptible revolution of consciousness, a turning away from the 784 00:47:41,221 --> 00:47:46,511 false gods of romantic fulfillment, parental approval, and societal standard 785 00:47:46,711 --> 00:47:52,221 toward a God who is not a means to an end, but an end in themselves. 786 00:47:52,691 --> 00:47:56,011 You see, Leah's sons will become tribes, her descendants kings and 787 00:47:56,011 --> 00:48:00,101 prophets, but the real genealogy of her suffering is spiritual. 788 00:48:00,551 --> 00:48:04,621 Every time someone is loved less than they deserved, every time a 789 00:48:04,651 --> 00:48:09,421 person's contributions are invisible or undervalued, every time a soul 790 00:48:09,421 --> 00:48:13,811 cries out for recognition and finds none, Leah is there, soft-eyed and 791 00:48:13,811 --> 00:48:16,711 breakable, but now with a core of iron. 792 00:48:17,011 --> 00:48:20,331 Her legacy is not just in children, but in the millions who have 793 00:48:20,331 --> 00:48:24,581 wrestled with the anguish of being second best and have, through some 794 00:48:24,731 --> 00:48:31,141 m-mysterious alchemy of faith, transmuted that anguish into praise. 795 00:48:31,831 --> 00:48:39,313 What is the thing today that you need to take the deepest adoration 796 00:48:39,313 --> 00:48:45,363 of your heart off of so that you can experience liberation and freedom. 797 00:48:45,363 --> 00:48:49,183 You see, this is an invitation, this story, and an invitation to stop loading 798 00:48:49,483 --> 00:48:53,853 impossible freight into our relationships, our careers, our status, our children. 799 00:48:54,153 --> 00:49:00,083 An invitation to see that even the best hopes, the best loves fail us or fade. 800 00:49:00,433 --> 00:49:04,683 And the true liberation comes only when we take the deepest adoration 801 00:49:04,683 --> 00:49:08,503 of our hearts off those things, and we put it where it belongs. 802 00:49:08,553 --> 00:49:14,083 To go to bed with Rachel, wake up with Leah, and learn to say, "This time, 803 00:49:14,823 --> 00:49:18,143 this time, I will praise the Lord." 804 00:49:19,423 --> 00:49:22,933 But notice that's not the end, and this is the power. 805 00:49:23,343 --> 00:49:27,793 What God does for her, she can't know, but the narrator knows, In 806 00:49:27,793 --> 00:49:32,053 chapter forty-eight, we learn that Judah is the one through whom the 807 00:49:32,053 --> 00:49:36,233 king will come, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Messiah. 808 00:49:36,613 --> 00:49:40,073 Jesus is the descendant of Judah. 809 00:49:40,363 --> 00:49:44,183 And God looks down at a beautiful woman and an ugly woman and looks at the 810 00:49:44,353 --> 00:49:50,753 one nobody wanted and says, "I want you to be the great-great-grandmother 811 00:49:50,823 --> 00:49:57,381 of Jesus," to the very girl who was unloved and unlovely And in verse 812 00:49:57,391 --> 00:50:02,491 31, when the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, it says that He loved her. 813 00:50:03,111 --> 00:50:06,591 Jacob, the son who is not loved, and Leah, the girl who is not loved, 814 00:50:06,591 --> 00:50:10,411 are the ones whom the Messiah that will save the world comes through. 815 00:50:10,841 --> 00:50:13,721 And the Lord saw that Leah wasn't loved, and He came to her. 816 00:50:13,721 --> 00:50:17,831 He wants the ones no one else wants. 817 00:50:18,051 --> 00:50:18,731 Why? 818 00:50:19,521 --> 00:50:24,101 Because He's good, and it points to Jesus being the bridegroom who comes 819 00:50:24,111 --> 00:50:26,261 for the bride that no one else wants. 820 00:50:26,781 --> 00:50:31,651 You see, Jesus is going to grow up lonely and rejected and constantly misunderstood, 821 00:50:31,981 --> 00:50:36,661 and at the end, He experienced the only rejection that could truly destroy us. 822 00:50:36,891 --> 00:50:43,731 He reached out in the dark and called out to His Father, but there was no answer, 823 00:50:43,981 --> 00:50:50,651 just the cup of the bitter curse that we deserved, but that He drank instead of us. 824 00:50:50,951 --> 00:50:54,211 It is not merely a story about God's inversion of worldly 825 00:50:54,211 --> 00:50:55,491 values, though it is that. 826 00:50:55,881 --> 00:51:00,371 It is a story about the heart of God who sees the ones the world refuses 827 00:51:00,371 --> 00:51:04,661 to see, who listens to the voices we dismiss, who seeks out the ones we 828 00:51:04,661 --> 00:51:07,001 have already consigned to obscurity. 829 00:51:07,471 --> 00:51:12,041 In this, as the narrator strains to tell us, it points to something even grander, 830 00:51:12,351 --> 00:51:17,311 Jesus, the ultimate bridegroom who comes for the bride no one else wants. 831 00:51:17,751 --> 00:51:20,431 The logic of the cross is already being whispered here. 832 00:51:20,721 --> 00:51:23,851 Jesus is the descendant not of Rachel, but Leah. 833 00:51:24,001 --> 00:51:27,581 He is the son, many generations down the line of the unloved, 834 00:51:27,581 --> 00:51:29,111 the plain, and the despised. 835 00:51:29,461 --> 00:51:33,481 And when he comes, he does not come as conqueror, but as a man 836 00:51:33,481 --> 00:51:35,381 of sorrows acquainted with grief. 837 00:51:35,671 --> 00:51:39,841 One whom men hide their faces, it said, a man with no form or 838 00:51:40,461 --> 00:51:42,851 comeliness that we should desire him. 839 00:51:43,511 --> 00:51:46,891 He comes not as Rachel, but as Leah. 840 00:51:47,231 --> 00:51:49,941 And when he comes, he loves the Leah's of the world. 841 00:51:50,011 --> 00:51:53,541 He builds his kingdom not on the backs of the powerful or the beautiful or 842 00:51:53,541 --> 00:51:57,991 the admired, but on the rejected, the marginalized, the tax collectors, the 843 00:51:57,991 --> 00:52:02,701 prostitutes, and the sinners, the ones whom everybody agrees are past redemption, 844 00:52:02,711 --> 00:52:05,471 beyond notice, not even worthy of scorn. 845 00:52:05,631 --> 00:52:09,291 He comes for the brides no one else would choose, and he marries himself 846 00:52:09,291 --> 00:52:13,301 to them, giving them his own name, his own glory, his own destiny. 847 00:52:13,671 --> 00:52:17,641 but the gospel does not merely invert the world's values by exalting the lowly. 848 00:52:17,951 --> 00:52:19,991 It does something even more revolutionary. 849 00:52:20,201 --> 00:52:25,061 It says that to be loved by God is to become beautiful, that in the act 850 00:52:25,061 --> 00:52:29,481 of being chosen, the plain become radiant, the despised become precious, 851 00:52:29,791 --> 00:52:31,861 the overlooked become the beloved. 852 00:52:31,861 --> 00:52:35,241 The very logic of the cross is that Jesus himself became ugly. 853 00:52:35,491 --> 00:52:40,321 He lost the true beauty of his noble soul so that those who believe in him, no 854 00:52:40,321 --> 00:52:48,071 matter how much they resemble Leah, are to him as stunningly beautiful as Rachel. 855 00:52:48,541 --> 00:52:52,841 He sees a bride that isn't wanted, and in Him we have a Father that will 856 00:52:52,841 --> 00:52:54,791 deal with all our imperfect fathers. 857 00:52:55,031 --> 00:52:58,241 In Him, we have a perfect brother that will deal with all our imperfect 858 00:52:58,241 --> 00:53:01,801 brothers and families, and in Him, we have a perfect spouse that will 859 00:53:01,801 --> 00:53:03,801 deal with all our imperfect spouses. 860 00:53:04,201 --> 00:53:09,271 And what is left for us but to follow Leah's example to praise the Lord, not 861 00:53:09,271 --> 00:53:13,391 because we have finally gotten what we wanted, not because the world at last 862 00:53:13,391 --> 00:53:19,181 recognizes our worth, but because in Jesus our worth is established and irrevocable. 863 00:53:19,571 --> 00:53:22,081 Because in him we are not only loved but chosen. 864 00:53:22,271 --> 00:53:25,141 Because in him we are not only seen but delighted in. 865 00:53:25,391 --> 00:53:30,047 Because in him, even if the whole world passes us by We are the 866 00:53:30,057 --> 00:53:32,737 treasure at the heart of God. 867 00:53:33,117 --> 00:53:37,007 His eyes are ravished with your beauty. 868 00:53:37,587 --> 00:53:42,127 When we believe in Him, though we might look like Leah, God sees us as Rachel, 869 00:53:42,347 --> 00:53:49,287 a stunning beauty, and it seemed like a day for the love that He had for her. 870 00:53:50,077 --> 00:53:50,527 Amen.