There's No Need to Doubt Him Now

Jacob’s life is one long journey…not like a short film…or a docu-series…more like an epic. Jacob’s life interjects with the most important considerations all of us make. What does life hold for me? What lay ahead for me? Who can I trust? What do I do when I lose the most important people in my life? How do I respond when people give to me what I have given to others?

Jacob’s story is our story. We live in a world perfectly suited for us by God, but we wonder if the God who made the stars and sun will provide for us to pay our light bill. We wonder if the God from whom all life came will or can impart life into the womb of the woman that we desperately love. We struggle with uncertainties in view of the millions of certainties which we have in God.

And the Lord Jesus has led us each and every step of the way— and there’s no need to doubt Him now!

In this short excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, the fictional demon Wormwood instructs his apprentice Screwtape to build on the doubts that often occur once the initial spiritual and emotional exuberance of conversion begin to wear off.

Lewis’ imaginative advice here is a helpful reminder of the spiritual battle we are in, and the enemies’ goal to dampen our faith, making it an ineffective little part of our lives, rather than a world-changing faith.

Let him [the Christian] assume that the first ardours of his conversion might have been expected to last, and ought to have lasted, forever, and that his present dryness is an equally permanent condition.  Having once got this misconception well fixed in his head, you may then proceed in various ways.  It all depends on whether your man is of the desponding type who can be tempted to despair, or of the wishful-thinking type who can be assured that all is well. …

[Make] him doubt whether the first days of his Christianity were not, perhaps, a little excessive.  Talk to him about ‘moderation in all things’.  If you can once get him to the point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point’, you can feel quite happy about his soul.  A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942) in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, HarperOne, 2007, p.210.

Kent Crockett said of doubt: “Doubt is not unbelief, but it is not faith either.  It wavers between faith and unbelief, unable to make up its mind what it wants to be.  It is like the hitchhiker who was thumbing a ride with his hand in one direction–and thumbing a ride with his other hand in the other direction.  He wasn’t sure which way he wanted to go.”

HERE IN CHAPTER 31, WE’D ERECT A HUGE BILLBOARD ALONG THE HIGHWAY— WITH BLINKING NEON LIGHTS— AND LIGHT STROBES WHICH REACH UNTO THE HEAVENS AND PROCLAIM,

There’s no need to doubt God now!

Journey of a Family- Ur- Haran- Canaan- Abraham-Sarai-Hagar-Ishmael- Isaac- Moriah- Jacob-

Journey of a Flight- escaping Esau

Journey & a Fraud (Laban)

his work for Leah

his work for Rachel

the ownership of cattle through markings at their births

striped cattle

speckled

grisled

the changing of his wages- Genesis 31:7: “And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me.”

Journey of Family

What God had done in Jacob’s life He now wanted to do in Rachel’s life.

Jacob’s deception and stealing of the birthright and the blessing

Jacob meeting Laban and reaping what He had sowed

a changed man is about to meet Esau (chapter 32)

now it’s Rachel’s turn

In other words, God does not just want to work in Jacob’s life. He wants to work in Rachel’s life…He wants to work in Joseph’s life…and Ephraim and Manasseh’s life…and on to Obed’s life…and David’s life…and Solomon’s life…Paul’s life…I hope you get the point. God was not as much institutionalizing a new formal religion; rather, God was building a family. He was building a family of faith! AND IN THE JOURNEY OF A FAMILY, WE DON’T WANT TO LEAVE ANYONE BEHIND!

WHY DID RACHEL TAKE THE TERAPHIM FROM THE FAMILY HOME?

SPIRITUAL ASPECT- to prevent her father from the sin of idolatry

PRACTICAL ASPECT- to prevent her father (presumably a diviner) from knowing the direction they were traveling

Genesis 31:24-25: “And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said unto him, Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. Then Laban overtook Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the mount: and Laban with his brethren pitched in the mount of Gilead.”

RELIGIOUS ASPECT- divine protection and prosperity

"In the secret depths of her heart she was still an idol-worshiper and decided to err on the side of caution — just in case. She took Laban's advice-givers and soothsayers so that they would not tell him where the refugees went and would instead offer Jacob's clan their protection against pursuit" (268).1 Nebula4.2, June 2007; Te; Tumanov: Yahweh vs. Teraphim... 140

I Samuel 19:8-17: “And there was war again: and David went out, and fought with the Philistines, and slew them with a great slaughter; and they fled from him. And the evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand: and David played with his hand. And Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin; but he slipped away out of Saul’s presence, and he smote the javelin into the wall: and David fled, and escaped that night. Saul also sent messengers unto David’s house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning: and Michal David’s wife told him, saying, If thou save not thy life to night, to morrow thou shalt be slain. So Michal let David down through a window: and he went, and fled, and escaped. And Michal took an image, and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats’ hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth. And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, He is sick. And Saul sent the messengers again to see David, saying, Brin…”

Zechariah 10:2: “For the idols have spoken vanity, And the diviners have seen a lie, And have told false dreams; They comfort in vain: Therefore they went their way as a flock, They were troubled, because there was no shepherd.”

FINANCIAL ASPECT- to dominate over her father and to increase financially

: “And Rachel and Leah answered and said unto him, Is there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house? Are we not counted of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and hath quite devoured also our money. For all the riches which God hath taken from our father, that is ours, and our children’s: now then, whatsoever God hath said unto thee, do.” Genesis 31:14-16

An alternative explanation is likewise parsimonious with the text but also incorporates an intriguing nuance of ancient Mesopotamian law. The legal owner of hereditary property rights within a family was demarcated by the possession of familial idols [4]. The idols represented a discrete and irrevocable icon of control and deference to authority within the family unit and for public recognition. Presumably, should the dominant family member lose control of those idols, their claim of property and inheritance would be in jeopardy, all the more so potentially reverting authority to the new owner.

from 1925-1933 there were tablets found in the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk. They are known as the Nuzi tablets. They describe the life of Mesopotamian people group--- even a group of people known as the Habiru.

According to the tablets of Nuzi, if a father-in-law gave his son-in-law his household god, that meant that he was appointing him as his heir. Laban certainly did not intend to appoint Jacob as his heir, so Rachel was potentially doing more than grabbing a souvenir from her father’s house. She could have actually been trying to make herself and Jacob the principal heirs of her father’s estate, rather than her actual brothers, Laban’s own sons. Obviously, Laban was having no part of this.

The relevant statement as best translated from the cuneiform writing is: “If a son-in-law (or adoptee) possesses the household gods of his father-in-law (adopter), then he was considered a real son and would share in the inheritance.”

in The Journal of Bible Literature, it states that ‘the above cuneiform translation’ means that “when property is to pass to other than normal heirs, such as the daughter’s husband, the house gods, as protectors and symbols of family holdings are thus drawn in, as it were, to safeguard and to render legitimate – not only the property, but also the person in relation to the property – against possible future claims.” (A. Draffkorn, p. 222).

If the terafim represented this pragmatic role of family idol it would explain Lavan’s targeted complaint against Yaacov for their theft and his motivation for such a harried pursuit. Furthermore, this explains Rachel’s motivation to steal the teraifm upon her departure as she is about to lose access to her family’s property and any potential legal rights she or her sister might have to family inheritance. Rachel and Leah already made it clear that they knew they were being unjustly denied their familial inheritance by Lavan (31:14-16), therefore she would be motivated to seize the property rights any way she could before it was too late.

Genesis 35:2-4: “Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments: And let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.”

Genesis 44:11-12: “Then they speedily took down every man his sack to the ground, and opened every man his sack. And he searched, and began at the eldest, and left at the youngest: and the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack.”