Sermon Tone Analysis

Unexpected Blessing

Livestream!

We’ve been following Jacob in this series about identity.

Jacob struggled with a bit of an identity crisis from before the time he was born.

His brother, Esau, didn’t put much stock in his identity and actually sold his own birth right as first born son for a bowl of beans.

Last week we saw that God wanted Jacob to realize that He is always with him, even when Jacob doesn’t realize it.

We also briefly mentioned Jacob’s family situation.

Once he made it to his uncle Laban’s house, Jacob found the woman of his dreams, but ended up marrying her and her sister, then having kids with both sisters and their servants!

So get out your popcorn and box of tissues because today we are going to talk about that soap opera.

If you have your bibles and want to follow along, this story can be found in Genesis 29.

While search for it I’ll tell you a quick story.

Once there was a group of people on a crocodile safari adventure.

When the boat would reach a certain point in the river where you could see the most crocodiles, the tour guide would often joke with the patrons, “I will give $30,000 to anyone who was brave enough to jump into the river and successfully swim to the shore without dying.”

At first everyone seemed to laugh when suddenly a man jumped into the river and began frantically swimming away from the crocodiles who were chasing him.

After the quick swim he made it to the other side and everyone cheered for him for winning the money.

When they got back to the hotel the manager applauded him for being brave and jumping out of the boat.

The man responded, “I did’t jump!

Somebody pushed me!”

To which his wife laughed.

Behind every successful man is a woman.

That was just a joke, so nobody needs to take some kind of strange inspiration from this story!

The couple in that story must have had some serious issues in their relationship.

Hopefully none of you have ever wanted to push someone into a river full of crocodiles, but I’m sure we have all experienced some serious challenges in our own relationships as well.

Today we are going to talk about Jacob and issues he faced in his relationships and allow God to give us some insight and encouragement into some of the challenges we face today.

If you are taking notes, this story focuses on 3 specific people, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.

Though they face the same struggle, they will each have a completely different experiences within their specific perspective.

To me this story is a great representation of how God can take one experience and teach multiple lessons to us, whether we continually learn new lessons throughout our lives from one experience or if we share an experience with someone else and our takeaway is something completely different from theirs.

Since our focus is on Identity, today we will look at how these three people allowed their pain and circumstances to influence decisions they made.

Then how God used these red flags to not only change their lives, but fulfill His promises and bring hope and change to countless people in the future.

We will start by focusing on Jacob.

JACOB: DECEPTION

Something we already know about Jacob is that he typically represents deception.

We probably should have just been calling him “Fake-ob” from the beginning.

We are going to pick up the story after Jacob travels to his uncles and right before he meets Rachel for the first time.

He had just finished this long trip to his uncles place and he was probably very excited to have finally made it.

The first half of chapter 29 describes Jacob and his string of divine coincidences.

His experience actually mirrors the encounter in chapter 24 that lead to his mother and father meeting and getting married.

Both stories imply that God provided some kind of divine guidance.

One commentary describes it this way...

He “happened” onto a spot where a well was located; it “happened” to be near Haran, where Laban lived (29:5), and Laban’s daughter Rachel just “happened” to be coming to the well (v.

6).

This timing was the work of the loving sovereign God who was leading all the way (cf.

24:27).

The fact that the meeting took place at a well is significant because a well was often associated with God’s blessing (cf.

16:13–14; 21:19; 26:19–25, 33).

If you reach chapter 24, Abraham’s servant who was searching for a wife for Isaac happened to be at a well that happened to be near Isaac’s uncle when Rebekah happened to be coming to the well for water.

There are more parallels in Jacobs story and I will mention some of them, but this is another story that is a good one to dig out the concordance and see where it takes you.

For example, this story also parallel’s the time when Jesus was at the well with the Samaritan woman.

Jacob wanted to give the flock of animals water, but his uncles shepherds wanted to wait.

He would eventually be in charge of his uncles animals and through him they would prosper.

Jesus wanted to give the Samaritan woman living water so that she would never thirst again and have abundant and eternal life.

At the end his encounter, Jacob told Rachel who he was and she ran to get her father.

Laban then ran out to meet him and after Jacob shared his story Laban believed as well.

After Jesus told the woman that He is the Messiah, she ran into town to tell others and they listened to Jesus’ story and believed.

There are all sorts of interesting parallels and wordplays being used in this story.

For now, let’s talk about three ways deception can derail our identity, if we allow it to.

First...

JACOB ACTS WITHOUT THINKING

In terms of identity, he doesn’t take the time to let his identity speak for itself.

Instead he immediately tries to impress everyone with an extravagant bridal purchase price for Laban’s younger daughter.

He only worked for his uncle Laban for a month when his uncle offers to hire him as an employee.

To Jacob, this is a great opportunity to marry Rachel, the younger daughter.

Even though Laban had two daughters, Rachel and the older, Leah, Jacob only loved Rachel even though he’s only known her a month.

How does he KNOW that he loves her? Great question...

He thinks she’s hot!

That’s the bible’s way of saying Rachel was hot.

She had GREAT eyes.

So what does Jacob do?

I mean, he is a guy and probably trying to impress her and her dad, so he over commits.

“Yeah, I can bench 350!”...

It was customary during this time for the father of the groom to pay or give expensive gifts to the father of the bride in exchange for the two to marry, but Jacob WAY over does it.

At the very least he wasn’t using good negotiating tactics.

You are supposed to start out small and work your way up.

His first offer was so huge that Laban didn’t give him a chance to reconsider.

One could say that Jacob was aware of the custom of marrying the older daughter first and he may have been attempting to avoid the situation he found himself in (married to the wrong daughter), but he ends up making the same offer again for Rachel after his marriage to Leah.

The second

JACOB ACTS ENTITLED

Entitlement is just another way of saying that someone has deceived himself.

After he works the 7 years, Jacob decides that he has earned his reward.

You can tell by his language that he isn’t concerned about anyone but himself.

Jacob is about to learn a hard lesson about humility.

He is about to see what happens when someone else shows him the same love and respect that he showed his older brother 7 years ago.

He goes to Laban and demands what belongs to him!

We’ve talked a lot about Jacob being a deceiver.

In this story we see how Jacob’s role changes and now he’s the one being deceived.

He was on the run for tricking his brother and father, now he is the one being tricked by his mother’s brother.

By technicality, Jacob the younger took something belonging to the older.

Now, his uncle Laban uses a technicality to trick Jacob and marry off his older daughter first.

The irony of the deceptions must have echoed in his mind.

He must have known by this point how he made his older brother, Esau, feel.

JACOB LIVED A LIE

Jacob was good at deceiving others.

He was good at pretending to be something he wasn’t.

He was so good at it that he got comfortable living in his lies.

I think that is one reason he made such a huge offer for Rachel.

He might have thought, “How could anyone try to rip me off when I am giving them such a great deal.”

But when you live a lie, it will eventually catch up to you...

Jacob worked for 7 years expecting to marry Rachel, but he found himself lying next to Leah.

The deception Jacob had sown his whole life had come back to haunt him.

Sometimes, like Jacob, we will pretend to be something in order to get something.

We will spend our lives working for Rachel, but then wake up next to Leah.

Next, Jacob agrees to work for 7 more years to marry Rachel.

This time he actually get’s to marry her at the beginning of the seven years though.