God's Providence in Jacob's Exile

Introduction

In many areas of Christian teaching there are words that we have become so familiar with that we may forget to carefully search the Scriptures to find out what they actually mean. It is these popular words that are most confusing because we can be saying the same thing but meaning something totally different. Sometimes it is well worth the time and effort to study the words we use the most in our Christian vocabulary to make sure we mean the same thing that Scripture means.

One such word is the word “blessing.” When the word is used in our every day life, the majority of the time most Christians use it to speak of the things God gives us in this life out of his abundant grace. These are indeed blessings, and must be recognized as such. However, these are not the true blessings of God, but rather they are the shadow of a far more substantial blessing. Even basic logic should tell us this, since the truest and fullest blessings of an eternal God can not be anything but eternal. Thomas Watson said, “True blessedness must have eternity stamped on it.” Anyone can receive a temporary blessing, but only the children of God by faith can embrace the true blessings of God. Are not the poor in Spirit blessed because they will see God?

In our text, we see our protagonist, Jacob, receive the blessings of God despite the deceit of his father in law. In the midst of all this, Jacob’s faith remains rather weak. But the real blessing that Jacob receives goes far beyond the provision of flocks and wealth and children. These things should not be seen as the real blessings, but rather the symptom of a great and substantial blessing. That blessing is the favour, the smile, and the covenant love of God.

Jacob’s Shackle: He Can’t Leave!

Our text begins right after the birth of Joseph and after the second set of 7 years that Jacob had worked as an indentured servant to pay off the bride price. This is an ideal set of circumstances for Jacob to leave and return to the land that God has promised him. Remember that Jacob living in Paddan Haram was never meant to be a permanent solution. He had fled from his brother’s murderous plots and had been sent by his father to find a wife, but without a bride price this proved to be difficult. After working for 7 years for a bride price, Jacob was tricked into marrying the older sister of the woman he wanted to marry, and thus he was tricked into another 7 years of servitude for the wife he actually loved. Jacob has met his match as the tricks he previously pulled on his brother and father are being pulled on him, but Laban is far from finished. His plan is to have Jacob stay forever have having married his two daughters goes a long way into helping this plan. We later learn in Genesis 31:42 that if Jacob had left now, Laban would have taken back his daughters and all the grandchildren. Laban plans to keep his daughters close to him and to keep Jacob poor so that his own house can spread through his grandchildren, rather than the house of Jacob.

The theme of slavery in a foreign land becomes very clear here. While Jacob is not technically a slave, he is an indentured servant that is being kept against his will, and if he tried to leave his family would be taken from him and perhaps he would even be killed. What is he to do? He is in a foreign land, and has no way to leave, and he is being kept from the land that God promised him on his way to this foreign land. Jacob needs deliverance.

God’s Blessings Spread

Ironically, it is God’s undeserved blessings on Jacob that is making Laban so desperate to keep him there. In verse 26 we see confirmation that Jacob is afraid Laban will keep his wives and children from him if he tries to leave, because he asks Laban to give them to him because his fourteen years of service is finished. Jacob feels that Laban is holding him by the ear because, although his days of indentured servitude are over, Laban still holds sway over him. Laban claims that he has learned through pagan divination that Jacob is the reason he has prospered so much in the last 14 years. Even Laban recognizes that it is YHWH that has blessed him through Jacob.

God’s blessings to his people often positively affect even unbelievers around them. Look at the history of western culture and everything from scientific advances, healthcare advances, humanitarian efforts, prison reform, care for orphans, education advances, and the abolition of 18th century slavery all have Christians and Christian teaching behind them. The world is a better place because of Christians acting like Christians. Modern universal education came from a desire for children to learn how to read the Bible. Modern medicine came from a desire to help the sick and needy. Even movements against animal cruelty find their origin from Christians who believed human beings, as image bearers of God, need to take care of the world God has given us. So it is that God, in blessing everything Jacob does, Laban gets blessed as a result. The same thing will happen with Joseph in Egypt. Even the prison that Joseph was kept in after his false conviction benefited from him, both his integrity and the blessings that God pours out on him. However, instead of being led to repentance and faith in the God of Abraham, Laban is looking for how he can use God’s favour to his advantage. Can he trick God to bless him instead of the man God intends to bless? We’ll learn as the text goes on that, while he tricked Jacob, he cannot trick God. When Jacob speaks, he seems to be taking a little bit too much of the credit, but he also points out that what Laban says he determined by pagan divination is obvious to see. A subtle mocking of Laban’s paganism can be sensed.

The Deal

So Laban tries to make a deal with Jacob, seemingly a deal that Jacob could not refuse. He asks him to name his wages, and Jacob’s desire is laughably low. The spotted and speckled in an average herd would not be seen as a sufficient wage in those days, giving more credence to the idea that Jacob is trapped in a deal with his father in law. But he makes this deal, that the sheep and goats that are abnormally coloured would go to Jacob and the rest would be Laban’s. More than a fair deal for Laban, and Laban agrees. And then Laban moves the spotted sheep 3 days journey away. In other words, he is hiding Jacob’s wages and is making sure that no spotted and speckled animals will be born.

Laban’s crooked character is becoming more and more plain. Laban is more powerful than Jacob and he knows it and he wants it to stay that way. If Jacob became more wealthy than he, he would be threatened by Jacob and would not be in a position to call the shots. Power struggles were very serious in the ancient world, and becoming wealthy meant those around you automatically felt threatened. Abimelech felt threatened and became hostile towards Isaac when God blessed him richly. When Israel is in Egypt, they will be subject to slavery primarily because God blessed them by giving them lots of children. The world will continue to become hostile towards God’s people when God shows favour towards them because they are the spiritual descendants of Cain.

In this way, Laban is attempting to siphon God’s blessings away from Jacob, who he knows God is directing his favour to, and steal them. The man who believes he can trick God is indeed the most foolish. Laban thinks he has it made. Even Jacob’s minimal wage is taken away the very day he made it, a wage that Laban will change ten times over the coming years, meaning that Jacob can never make any wealth for himself. In the mid 1700’s a fishing company had fishermen in Newfoundland in a similar situation, where they were constantly in dept to this company because of the low price of their fish since the company held a monopoly in the Newfoundland fishing industry. These fishermen were left practically as slaves to this company, always in dept and therefore always unable to get out of the inhumane life situation they were in. Situations like this were common in the States and Bermuda as well and these practices were actually what eventually led to the African American Slave trade. Jacob is under Laban’s thumb and for all practical purposes, a slave to his father in law. He can’t leave without leaving his family and having nothing to speak for 14 years of labour. What a situation Jacob has got himself into. All this time, Jacob should have been trusting God, praying, and giving thanks to him. Because of his lack of faith, God has put him in a situation where he can’t do anything to get out.

God Blesses Jacob’s Shepherding

And so once again, when our protagonist is at his weakest, God shows himself to be strong. Instead of letter his blessings be siphoned by Laban, God blesses Jacob in an admittedly strange way. There is no feasible way that the oddly coloured livestock could mate with the livestock that Jacob is taking care of, so it would seem that genetically it should be impossible for Jacob to get his wages through breeding. This is where the supernatural hand of God becomes more and more obvious.

Magical Solutions

Unfortunately, Jacob is still stubbornly refusing to put his faith in God alone. Instead, he puts his faith in magic. He gets it in his head that putting down these sticks that have had the bark peeled to make white streaks will cause the animals to breed and produce spotted and speckled animals. Some have suggested that the toxins in almond and poplar branches, just under the bark, can effect the fertility cycle of the animals. If this is the case, God may have been using these chemical properties, unknown to Jacob, to accomplish his blessings. It’s also been suggested that the purebred sheep would be weaker and less willing to mate than hybrids, and since hybrids would be more likely to have the recessive colouring gene that gave them their distinct stops and speckles, more and more of that gene comes out as a result of the increased fertility because of the peeled branches, meaning that more and more of the strong sheep were being born with the recessive gene for abnormal colouring and less of the purebred sheep were fertile. Is this a good explanation? Could be, and it certainly gives us a scenario where God may have used natural means to accomplish his ends. However, the main point of this text should be what we emphasize, and that is that God blessed Jacob against seemingly all odds. God’s plan with Jacob is sure and certain, he will not stay in Paddan Haram, he will not always be under his father-in-law’s thumb.

God’s Power

If we have learned anything from the story of Jacob, it is that God is more powerful than Jacob’s weakness. Jacob has been acting a lot like Cain in a lot of ways, trying to get God’s blessing his own way rather than submitting to and trusting in him to provide. However, it is God’s election that has the final word, and despite his questionable behaviour and lack of faith, God will not let him go down the path of faithlessness and reliance on human strength. So now, every human strength has been taken from him, and still God blesses him. God’s blessings are given freely, and this is shown perhaps nowhere more clearly than in God’s grace shown to Jacob. It is not some stick magic that gives him the blessings, nor it is even the possible science behind what may be a possible explanation for the success of Jacob’s flock. Whether natural or supernatural, all things are a gift from God’s hand and he sometimes blesses the most unexpected people in the most unexpected ways. But Jacob is God’s chosen one, his elect, and he is working in his life to make him see that. The fact that he is undeserving of such blessings emphasizes that he was not chosen because he was necessarily more righteous than his brother, but simply because it is God who chooses.

But think about how stressful this who situation is. He has two wives and two concubines all fighting about who is loved and who is having kids or not. He has nothing to his name, he can’t leave paddan Haram, and he’s had his only source of income moved three days walk away. He can’t challenge his powerful and rich father in law on this. His options are extremely limited, and still he doesn’t go to God. Instead he trusts in himself and his own power to help himself. But through it all, God’s hand has not left him. But it certainly has not helped Jacob to rely on himself. He relied on his own heart and eyes to pick a wife, and he ended up with two wives and the one he liked is the one who lacks any kind of good, godly character. God never meant for Jacob to go through his life with a vague notion of the blessings of God in the back of his mind as he tries to pull his own weight alone. He never meant for Jacob to think of himself as the master of his own fate and ignoring the proper praise and worship that God’s blessings are meant to awaken in us.

God’s people are meant to trust in God for everything and recognize that every blessing comes from him. As the hymn goes, “Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise.” In a perfect world, all of the good things that God gives people would result in continuous praises that produce the greatest joy; the joy of experiencing the love of God.

The Wages of Sin and the Gift of God

The thing about blessings is that they are never an end, but rather a taste of something better, the presence and love of God. The good things God gives us point us to that door, thanksgiving is the key, and faith gives us the illumination and sight to see the glory of God for what it is: the only thing worth living for in this world or the next.

Take Laban as a contrast. God blesses him, but only because blessing Jacob overflows onto his lap. When he tries to siphon those blessings from Jacob to himself, God doesn’t stop blessing the one he has elected to receive his blessings. God’s election is completely undeserved, it is given by grace. But God’s purpose is that his gifts be asked for and recieved by faith, and the greatest part of the blessing only comes after it is recieved with faith and thanksgiving. Jacob is actually missing out on the best part of the blessings of God. Better than any blessing is God himself. The hand of the giver is more beautiful than even the greatest riches that it could give. We all know what the wages of sin is. If you labour your whole life to forge your own morality and do whatever you want regardless of God and his commands, the wage you are rewarded with is spiritual death. But what is the gift of God? The ultimate gift that every other gift points us to and prepares us for? Eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Eternal life is much more than the ability to live forever. As we’ve been going through the book of 1 John in the evening we saw that eternal life has more to do with the quality of life, as well as it’s endurance. Eternal life means living in the presence of God in Christ by faith. It means being what we were created to be forever. To know God perfectly, without sin interrupting our relationship with him and without death separating us from his glory, is to have eternal life.

All of God’s favour that he shows to Jacob and to every other one of his people, from Abraham to Isaac to Joseph, down to the people of Israel, to David and finally to Christ himself. What God is meaning to show Jacob by multiplying his flocks and herds in the midst of this difficult situation is that God means for Jacob to have this life by submitting to God by faith, and Jacob is very slow in submitting to that faith. Despite this, God’s purpose of election will continue to work in his life because God loves him.

Conclusion

God’s purpose for you is that. That you would receive the good things in your life through faith and interpret it, through God’s Word, as being a good gift from him (James 1:17). The response to his good gifts is meant to be thanksgiving in faith, not discontent, and this faith will point you to the great gift, the ultimate gift from God, eternal life. While Laban was trying to get the temporary blessings of God by cheating Jacob out of them, he will miss out on the eternal life that those blessings are meant to point you towards. In the end, Laban’s path will lead to the wage of death, but by God’s grace Jacob will continue being pursued by God’s unfailing love.

In Christ, the gift of God has come to us in ultimate clarity. The favour of God follows those who abide in Christ by faith in the eternal life he provides, life much better than the multiplication of flocks and herds. But most importantly, in Christ you have recieved the new nature of faith by the Spirit to be a child of faith. The true blessing is God’s smile on you, and that smile is only obtained through the substitutionary blood of Christ. Pastor Tim Conway pointed out in a study just this week that throughout Scripture true blessing is the forgiveness of sins so that we may know God and have his favour. An unbeliever may receieve the shadow blessing, the free sample if you will that only lasts for a moment, but the real product, the substantial and eternal blessings of God are found only in humble faith in Christ. Abide in that faith, trusting God who provides the best for you in him.