Romance In the WorkPlace

Introduction

So…Marriage is what brings us together today.

Why don’t melons get married? Because they cantaloupe

Did you hear about the two cell phones that got married? The reception was amazing!

A little tip on how to remember your wedding anniversary. Forget it once.

Genesis Genesis 29:1–30:43—Romance in the Workplace

“Marriage is more than an exchange of vows. It is the foundation of the family, mankind’s basic unit of society, the hope of the world, and the strength of our country. It is the relationship between ourselves and the generation to follow.”

Sandra Day O’Conner

Kissing Cousins

Genesis A. Kissing Cousins (29:1–14a)

Perhaps the selection of a lifetime partner is second only in importance to our decision to trust Christ for eternal salvation.

Genesis 29:1–3 ESV

1 Then Jacob went on his journey and came to the land of the people of the east. 2 As he looked, he saw a well in the field, and behold, three flocks of sheep lying beside it, for out of that well the flocks were watered. The stone on the well’s mouth was large, 3 and when all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep, and put the stone back in its place over the mouth of the well.

OK let's dive on in explanation point as we look at these first few verses we need to remember that God promised to be with Jacob and there's a certain sense where we see Jacob become a new man. And it's interesting how different moments appear as symbols in the stories of the patriarchs whether it's tense or altars and one more of those moments or things is a well. Think back through the story of the patriarchs almost every time they show up at a well that is an important moment in the story. And there's almost a sense where a stone being over the entrance to this well makes us think back to Bethel and the stone that Jacob slept on and then used as a alter.

So Jacob has arrived in the land of the people of the east kind of a generic term meaning Jacob kind of didn't know where he was. But the idea is showing up at a well Moses wants us to make a connection with eliazar and his search for a wife for Isaac they both showed up at wells when they eventually found the woman that was to be the wife. I guess if you want to go looking for a wife... find a well :)

OK let's dive on in explanation point as we look at these first few verses we need to remember that God promised to be with Jacob and there's a certain sense where we see Jacob become a new man. And it's interesting how different moments appear as symbols in the stories of the patriarchs whether it's tense or altars and one more of those moments or things is a well. Think back through the story of the patriarchs almost every time they show up at a well that is an important moment in the story. And there's almost a sense where a stone being over the entrance to this well makes us think back to Bethel and the stone that Jacob slept on and then used as a alter.

So Jacob has arrived in the land of the people of the east kind of a generic term meaning Jacob kind of didn't know where he was. But the idea is showing up at a well Moses wants us to make a connection with eliazar and his search for a wife for Isaac they both showed up at wells when they eventually found the woman that was to be the wife. I guess if you want to go looking for a wife... find a well :)

Genesis 29:4–8 ESV

4 Jacob said to them, “My brothers, where do you come from?” They said, “We are from Haran.” 5 He said to them, “Do you know Laban the son of Nahor?” They said, “We know him.” 6 He said to them, “Is it well with him?” They said, “It is well; and see, Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep!” 7 He said, “Behold, it is still high day; it is not time for the livestock to be gathered together. Water the sheep and go, pasture them.” 8 But they said, “We cannot until all the flocks are gathered together and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well; then we water the sheep.”

It's fascinating seeing this change in Jacob power to this point he's just been lurking in the background doing what his mother tells him being willing to kind of get by on the advice of other people. But now following multiple encounters with God he has a new confidence. He has a new confidence to start conversations and then act to pursue this girl. Of course he's showing the same kind of confidence and energy that any red blooded guy would put forth to pursue a girl he likes :) :)

If we were to spend more time talking with God and realizing what he has called us to we would find more confidence just like Jacob found here.

But back to this story Jacob stepped up to the plate to move the rock to impress the girl. And in the story that we're going to get into he kind of is different than the other characters. Everyone else is used to the way things are and they're perfectly fine just waiting and Jacob realizes he needs to do something different.

Genesis 29:9–14 ESV

9 While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherdess. 10 Now as soon as Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, Jacob came near and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. 11 Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud. 12 And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kinsman, and that he was Rebekah’s son, and she ran and told her father. 13 As soon as Laban heard the news about Jacob, his sister’s son, he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house. Jacob told Laban all these things, 14 and Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh!” And he stayed with him a month.

Well we have to realize when we look at this story is Jacob is a strategic mind. He knows what he has to make happen. Three times in verse 10 alone laban is mentioned. So Jacob understands that the ultimate goal is not to get to Rachel at first he has to get to laban. He has to impress the dad even more than than nowadays. And so he moves the stone he meets Rachel and we have to remember when we read that he kissed her there's nothing romantic in that that's more like just a a form of greeting. And so by the end of the passage that we are looking at here laban meets Jacob and stays with him a month. Actually we know he's going to stay in that area for 14 years but we'll get to that in a minute.

It's fascinating to think that it may have been 100 years since Rebecca left home and in that time period and how long it took to travel it's unlikely that that family or extended family had been reunited other than messages sent through caravans. Anyway you cut it this was a truly special meeting

A Comparison of Two Wells.

I want you to consider for a moment the two different wells that we have well and truly covered period. :) in genesis chapter 24 eliazar shows up at a well. In genesis 29 Jacob shows up at a while and very quickly meet Rachel. In both of these stories the men find the woman they are looking for at the well. And you might say that they are really similar. But there is a very important difference between the two.

When Elieazar shows up at the well he immediately prays for God's guidance. And God leads and provides and Rachel turns out to be for the most part a huge blessing in Isaacs life.

See, he praays

Genesis 24:12–14 ESV

12 And he said, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. 13 Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. 14 Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.”

And he gives thanks.

Genesis 24:26–27 ESV

26 The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord 27 and said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.”

On the other hand when Jacob shows up at the well we have no prayers. And he ends up dealing with a massive deception that affects the rest of his life.

One of the crucial lessons throughout the book of genesis is the value of prayer. We must be people who bring our lives our decisions our concerns to God. We may not be crossing deserts but many of the decisions that we have to make have similar levels of effect on the rest of our lives as these decisions that these men made.

And to make a more direct comparison we've got to encourage our young people or anyone we know who's looking to get married to be consistently in prayer asking God for wisdom asking God for his leading throughout the whole process.

A Tale of Two Weddings

Genesis 29:14–20 ESV

14 and Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh!” And he stayed with him a month. 15 Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?” 16 Now Laban had two daughters. The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. 17 Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. 18 Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” 19 Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” 20 So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.

I So Jacob settles in and gets to work. They've been offers him what amounts to a full time job and Jacob begins negotiating. What's almost laughable is that leah's name means cow. Rachel's name means Ewe. There were a walking advertisement for dad's business endeavors.

We don't really understand what it means that leah's eyes were weak she might have been partially blind we don't know. Nevertheless Jacob makes an offer to marry Rachel. In that time you brought a payment to marry a girl and he had no payment to offer so he offered his work. This had to be the deal of a lifetime for laban he would have been happy to have Jacob anyway he could get him period to have him committed for seven years had to have been a windfall of epic proportions!

An interesting word throughout this section is work. In verses 1518 and 20 we see this word. Laban has reduce the beauty of family ties to an economic arrangement. And as we can see he's going to deceived Jacob and get even more work out of him. In a sense this kind of servitude is a foreshadowing a preview of what they're going to get into in Egypt.

Let’s continue.

Genesis 29:21–27 ESV

21 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” 22 So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. 23 But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. 24 (Laban gave his female servant Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her servant.) 25 And in the morning, behold, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” 26 Laban said, “It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. 27 Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.”

Maybe you've never noticed this before but Jacob doesn't actually ask for Rachel. The man only asks to be given his wife. And Leman Hopps all over that loophole. Now we have to wonder did he plan on this all along.? It's very likely that he was expecting Lia to find a husband during that seven years. We have to remember from the point of Jacob coming into the family business up to this .7 years has passed plenty of time for Laban to find a husband For his other daughter. But it doesn't happen.

And so the deceiver Jacob is himself deceived by the father Laban. And even though from our perspective it seems ludicrous that he was so deceived not noticing that a sister had been switched out in the ceremony Jacob was deceived and did not discover what happened until the next morning.

One Commentator puts it this way:

Genesis B. Double Wedding (29:14b–30)

“the very embodiment of anticlimax, and this moment a miniature of man’s disillusion, experienced from Eden onwards. Yet the story reveals that God, not Laban, had the last word. The deceiver Jacob was deceived and the despised Leah was exalted to become the mother of, among others, the priestly and kingly tribes of Levi and Judah” (Kidner, 160–61).

And so laban has the perfect excuse prepared. And not only does he have an excuse he has a readily accessible counter offer because Jacob is kind of stuck he wants Rac Laban is scheming and plotting for a way to unload his daughter and secure seven more years of workout of this guy.

It's sad we don't know what Rachel thought about all this. But we do know that in cultures like this ancient culture this nomadic culture even today women don't have a voice.

And from jacob's perspective he kind of didn't have any other options. He was still a stranger in the area. And he loved Rachel. So he kind of had to step into the solution that laban provided.

One thing we need to pay attention to is when we start deceiving family members for whatever the reason we start a cascade effect of deception that can only be interrupted by sincere repentance. Deception continues throughout jacob's life.

Genesis 29:28–30 ESV

28 Jacob did so, and completed her week. Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. 29 (Laban gave his female servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her servant.) 30 So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years.

So Jacob now has two wives essentially just like his grandfather Abraham. And in the same way the problems that came up with Sarah and Hagar show up in jacob's life for the rest of his life.

There's a sense where laban becomes almost an agent for God disciplining Jacob. In fact jacob's life is a living reminder of this passage in the New Testament

Galatians 6:7–8 ESV

7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

Genesis B. Double Wedding (29:14b–30)

The lesson is that, even though God’s people may experience God’s blessing on their endeavors, God will effectively discipline them by making them painfully aware of their unresolved sins. In short, we may say that they will reap what they have sown—even though they seem to be making progress by God’s provision. God may wait patiently before disciplining his people, but discipline he will, often using means similar to the offense to correct them (Ross, 503).

Conclusion

Genesis I. Introduction: More than Meets the Eye

The human body is composed of ten thousand trillion trillion atoms—a number greater than the stars of the universe. In all of us more than a trillion of these are replaced every one millionth of a second. In a normal lifetime, our hearts beat more than two billion times and pump sixty million gallons of blood through sixty thousand miles of blood vessels. A healthy body manufactures more than two million red blood cells every second. If we could somehow place these cells side by side, they would stretch for one hundred thousand miles.

The eyes you are now using to read this page contain more than one hundred million rods and cones in the retina, cones that take continuous pictures under light conditions that can vary by a factor of ten billion. If by chance you might be reading aloud, it may be worth remembering that your ear has a million moving parts which vibrate twenty thousand times per second and can distinguish among two thousand pitches. But that is merely the intricacy of one finite human body.

The universe apparently measures between ten and twenty billion light years across and may be populated by many galaxies of which our Milky Way is just one. Some astronomers believe it contains at least one hundred billion other galaxies, each one peppered with about one hundred billion stars.

That’s the God Jacob served, the God who gave his blessing to Abraham and Isaac and now protected Jacob as he wandered to the land of the eastern peoples. If Swenson’s analysis is right (and I have offered only the smallest sample), the amazing and awesome wonder of God’s majesty and power provide all the strength we need to live effectively in any age, whether the desert nomad life of Jacob or the fast and furious urban existence of today.

Pray to God for Wisdom

Trust God to Lead

Speak the Truth

Let’s pray.