The 4th Dimension 

Genesis 29 

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

The position that Patty described is so close to many of our hearts because we’ve been in that spot.  You see the thing going wrong and then your dear old heart flutters and you begin to worry and get anxious. That’s usually the way we spend a lot of our lives kind of fleeing in fear from those spots.  You can see the way it’s transformed if your heart rises inside you and you acknowledge, “My Father is in control and my Father knows this is happening, and my Father has already destroyed the deception that is here.  And Lord, I thank you that you have and I thank you that I can now rebuke it in this dear lady in Jesus’ name.” 

Loved ones, when we do that, when we act in faith and power like that the power of Calvary is released into that situation.  So, my heart goes out to you because I don’t know how often I’ve been in those spots. I think all of us when we’re at the actual moment, we kind of tremble and hesitate and that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.  We say, ‘Never let them even the whites of your eyes.  But, that’s what we do.  We show fear to Satan and then he mows right in over the top of us and it takes us a couple of days to recover, if we ever do. 

So, that’s what walking in faith is.  It’s walking in that immediate confidence that the Father is our father and that’s what we’re talking about these Sunday evenings, loved ones.  The not just believing that God is our Father but actually trusting him on the spot each moment and resting in him and laying back in him whatever the provocation, whatever the difficulty you’re in.  And most of us can trust him for certain things but it’s when those blasters come along, when you just discover you’re far overdrawn in the bank account and there’s just no way you can see it recovering.  Or, there’s something gone badly wrong in your relationship with somebody else. Or, you just see something that is absolutely hopeless and at that moment all your faith flies and you think, “Oh well God could do it for everybody else but not for me.” 

And it’s that moment that if your spirit has been resting and being built up by God’s word then you rise at that moment and you live in that peace.  And I’m sharing with myself as well as with you at this moment, that there’s no reason for any of us to have a moment of fear.  There isn’t.  It’s not our Father’s will that we would ever have a moment of fear or doubt at any time during any day. 

So, that’s what we’re talking about, loved ones, the life of faith.  We’ve reached in our studies Genesis 29 and it really outlines some of God’s dealings with Jacob. One of the difficulties that God has with all of us and especially that he had with Jacob is our own strength, our own natural strength.  We all have a lot of natural strength that we’ve just been almost taught to use in our everyday life.  And our teachers told us that we had certain abilities, and our mums and dads would say, “Oh, you have certain strengths and you can really think through things,” or, “You have a strong will,” or, “Certainly, you’re very strong emotionally,” or, “You’re very clever at math,” or, “You’re very clever at science,” or, “You’re very good at business.” 

And we all have all kinds of little things that we’ve been told we’re good at and we probably are good at them.  But when it comes to life’s difficult problems, those abilities are no use at all and God has to take us through the breaking of those strengths, abilities, and powers if he’s going to do anything spiritual through us.  I don’t know if you’re under the same misunderstanding as I have been for years, but the thought that you could create some life of God in somebody else through your own wisdom, your own intelligence, or your own abilities. Actually, we can’t.  We can’t create a thing in any other person as far as God is concerned.  We can do nothing by our own strength.

Loved ones, I don’t know you know, I hope that you’ve – well, in a way I hope you haven’t but in a way I hope you have, entered into some of the agonies of this because I think God probably lets us go for a while, I don’t know how many years, maybe until we’re 22 or 23, I don’t know, but maybe a wee bit longer.  He lets us go for a while in a fair degree of success and kind of victory and then he begins to pull us up about our own strength.  And then it is that – even if you’re 25, you think you’re having a midlife crisis. You say, “Oh, my life is falling apart.”  Really, it’s just that God is beginning to work on you.  He’s beginning to work on you and beginning to mold you and make you something that he can use because he’s beginning to destroy your own faith and yourself. 

Of course, the whole world is against us in that.  The whole world says, “Oh no, don’t let faith in yourself be destroyed.” We look at construction and we say, “You have an ability to do that,” or we looks at any of your preaching and we says, “You have an ability to do that,” or organize, “You have an ability to do that,” or you’re a lawyer, “You have ability to do that,” or a chef, “You have ability to do that.”  All the world says, “You have lots of ability you can tackle things by your own power.” 

If all of what we do is bringing glory to ourselves by our own strength and we impart no life to other people, is that what we want?  So, God has a dreadful job destroying this faith we have in our own abilities. It’s just agonizing but it has to be done and I would encourage your hearts that you’re beginning to come into maturity when that begins to happen and don’t get down about it and don’t think that everything in your life is falling apart, or that you’re no longer able to do anything.

I think God is just good to us.  I think he gives us a few little successes to keep us from going insane or, keep us from suicide.  He gives us a few little successes to make us feel like we can achieve something.  But really as you look at the dear old guys and the dear old woman that have been used by God, they’ve been used after they were absolutely convinced they had no ability in themselves and most of it is achieved through the George Mullers and through the other guys that pray quietly and God does mighty works through them.  When we get to heaven we’ll be amazed, it’s probably not Lutheran, and Wesley, and Calvin, there will be a whole lot of old ladies and old gentlemen who nobody knows about.  They’ll be up in front there, they’ll have been the mighty intercessors and the praying people that nobody ever saw or touched. 

And that’s the way God’s work goes forward and one of the things in order to use us through our faith.  See, the only thing he can use is our faith.  You see, we think, “Oh, you can use my talents.  You can use my abilities.”  No.  The only thing he can use is your faith.  He uses your faith in his power to do things.  Could I say that in our businesses, those of us who are in businesses here, and those of you who are in business for yourself, it seems to me that’s what we had to learn?  God had to bring us to the end of our abilities to do things and run businesses ourselves.  He could have let us go on and do that by the power that the world uses, but he wanted to teach us how to do business by faith.  And really the only way he could do it was just to smash us. It’s so easy when that happens to think, “Oh, we shouldn’t be in this at all.”  But no, you should be in it but you should be in it by God’s faith and by God’s power and that’s what he wants to do in your life.

So, every time you run up against a blank wall, it’s a blessed time, it’s a time of maturity, increasing maturity. If you say to me, “Is it going to get worse and worse?”  Yeah, probably.  At least, it probably is, as far as our own difficulties are concerned and our own problems. Yeah, it probably is going to get worse.  But, it is going to be easier to stay sane and at peace in the midst of those things because each time God brings you one of those, you realize, “Oh, I can do without my right foot.  Oh, I can do without my right leg.  Oh, I can do without my right arm.”  You realize more and more as you go through things without the power and the ability that you thought you needed, you realize that God can do everything without any activity on your part at all but faith.  And so it is a blessed thing.

I’d just like to take a couple of those things because otherwise I can share Genesis 29 very easily with you almost by reading it, but this is one of the things that God had to destroy in Jacob.  Why?  Because he was such a manipulator himself and such a user of his own natural strength.  Genesis 27 is one of the many examples and I’ll just read it through because you know it already.  Genesis 27:18, he had been told by his mum that even though he was the younger he was going to inherit his father’s authority over the nation and so when his father was about to give the blessing to his older brother Esau this is what happened.  Genesis 27:18, “So he,” [Jacob] went in to his father, and said, ‘My father’; and he said, ‘Here I am; who are you, my son?’  Jacob said to his father, ‘I am Esau your first-born.’”  That’s the kind of manipulator and liar he was.  “I have done as you’ve told me; now sit up and eat of my game, that you may bless me.’  But Isaac said to his son, ‘How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?’”  The lies just tripped out of him so fast, “’Because the LORD your God granted me success.’  Then Isaac said to Jacob, ‘Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.’  So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, who felt him and said, ‘The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.’  And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands; so he blessed him.  He said, ‘Are you really my son Esau?’  He answered, ‘I am.’” 

That’s the kind of manipulator that Jacob was and God had to break that natural strength.  And I don’t know how many of you are dishonest in order to get things going right but I certainly have seen that in my life in the past where you’re dishonest, you give a slightly wrong impression because you think by that means you can get the thing, even God’s will, moving forward a little.  Well, God does not need our help, least of all does he need our sin to help him and so God has to break that in us and that’s what he started to do in Jacob.

That’s what he did in Paul, if you remember.  If you look at Acts 26:24, it talks a little more about this soulish strength of our own abilities and personalities that we have.  Acts 26:24, I just noticed it yesterday when I was reading part of Acts.  Acts 26:24, “And as he thus made his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, ‘Paul, you are mad; your great learning is turning you mad.’”  And so even Festus and other officials realized that Paul had been brought up in the school of Gamaliel and he was a learned Pharisee and he obviously was a very intelligent and very trained academic mind and yet look what he says in 1 Corinthians 2:3. 

1 Corinthians 2:3-5, “And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in wisdom of men but in the power of God.”  And that was Paul broken of his own cleverness and his own wisdom.  I don’t know how you are in that department but so often you want to witness but in such a way that they see how clever we are or what a deep understanding we have. If they see that then their faith rests in our wisdom and cleverness and not in the power of God. 

Often God calls us to deny any ability or cleverness that we have so that it may be the simple word of the cross that saves people and that they rest in.  Of course, it takes a big responsibility off us because if you’re always trying to show your own cleverness, it becomes rather a burden.  They don’t always see it, the silly blind people.  So you have to kind of push it forward again and it gets kind of boring and weighty and you can even, on odd moments, feel a little guilty though you can stand against that as best you can.  But often I think, we just bring trouble upon ourselves, by trying to make it rest in our wisdom and cleverness. Our wisdom and cleverness is of no value at all, none at all and God has determined to break us of it.  He’ll just keep on clonking us and he’ll just keep on giving us unsatisfying and defeated witness situations until we get wise to it and we give up trying to show off at the same time we bring people to Jesus. 

Of course, old Paul had come to that.  And why?  So that it might rest in God only.  Loved ones, you and I, if it rests on us then you’re their savior forever and you can’t be their savior forever.   You’re going to die maybe before they die so you better get yourself out of that position of saving them.  It has to be by God’s work in their hearts and by their trust of him.  It can’t be their trust of us.

Peter had the same problem, if you remember, looking at Matthew 26:33.  It’s this old soulish strength.  Really, it was for God’s glory, it wasn’t that it was sin in that way.  It wasn’t for his own glory but it was for God’s glory but it was his own strength he was depending on, the same strength that Jacob had.  Matthew 26:33, “Peter declared to him, ‘Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.’  Jesus said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’  Peter said to him, ‘Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.’”  Then, of course, you look to the end of the chapter in Verse 74, “Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, ‘I do not know the man.’  And immediately the cock crowed.” 

It was that soulish strength, “I won’t leave you.  I won’t leave you.”  Oh, I remember, there’s a song that goes, “I’ve been in some big towns, I heard me some big talk,” and I’m sure you know it. That’s what Jesus would have said if he had that kind of accent.  “I’ve listened to a lot of protest and you won’t deny me and you won’t leave me but I know human nature and human nature is not strong enough to stand.” 

Loved ones, no we can’t stand in our own strength and our own power, and our own determination, and our own loyalty.  Finally, we have to bow before the Lord and say, “We have no strength, Lord. If we’re going to stay loyal to you it’s only because you can keep us loyal.  We cannot keep ourselves.  I am persuaded that whatsoever I’ve committed unto you, you are able to keep against that day.”  It always has to be our faith and God’s ability to keep us and keep us loyal.  It can never be our own determined strength and our own devotion that we have in our own natural abilities. 

Then there’s another one verse, a strange one in 2 Samuel 6.  You think of all things you know, this surely would be permissible.  You remember, of course, the difficulty was God had told the Israelites, “You must not touch the ark of the covenant.  The ark of the covenant is sacred, that’s where I dwell.”  The ark of the covenant was the place of God’s presence in Old Testament times and he said, “Don’t touch it under any circumstances.”  Of course this dear man thought, except if it’s in danger. 

2 Samuel 6:6, “And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled.”  So, you see, the oxen were pulling it on the cart and they stumbled and the ark was about to fall and Uzzah though, “Oh good, I ought to protect it because it’s a sacred thing.”  “And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there because he put forth his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God.”  That is very startling to all of us who are involved here in God’s work because you always think it’s right to protect God’s work and it’s right to guard God’s work.  And I think that’s what came to me in the midst of some of the things we’ve gone through, “Oh it’s always right to steady the ark of God.  It’s always right to steady his work.  It’s always right to protect his work.”  Well, nobody needs to protect God’s work, least of all we.  We don’t need to protect God’s work, God will protect his own work, and he will steady his own work. 

And I don’t know if you see it in your mum or your dad, or somebody that God is working in, you don’t need to protect God’s work in them, just let it be.  Let it be and exercise your faith in God to continue to protect his own work.  And that’s what he needs most of all.  He doesn’t need our tremulous little worries, “Oh, it’s all the good work God has been doing in my dad, is it all going to no avail?”  Or, “Is all the good work that God has been doing in my son or my daughter, is that all going down the drain?”  No, no, exercise faith at that very moment to say, “Lord, you are able to continue this good work that you have done in this person.”  God never needs any of us to steady the ark of the covenant.  Indeed, if we do, we will die ourselves because we are not exercising faith in what he has told us to do. 

So, it’s the old natural strength.  One of the things that helped me was in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.  “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it.  Let each man take care how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.  Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.  If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.  If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” 

The work that you do with your own natural strength will be wood, hay, and stubble. It will be burned up and won’t last.  The precious stones will be the work that God does and that will last and that’s the only work that will last forever -- the work that God does through your faith.  The work that you bring about or that you nail together some old way by your own natural strength, it will all be burned up.  God is good to say that you’ll be saved but only as through fire.  So it is vital, loved ones, to see the old natural strength will achieve nothing.

Now, that’s what God was determined to break in Jacob so let’s go to Genesis 29. Let’s go with the poor guy through it because what God did to him is what he is probably doing to you and to me in a thousand different ways.  He’s breaking that natural strength and we’re weeping our hearts out and saying, “What a cruel God you are and how far out of your will we are.”  Well he says, “Yeah, you are out of my will but not the way you think.  You’re right in my will, the things that are happening to you are exactly my will for you and they’re to bring you into conformity of my son.” 

“Then Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the people of the east.”  That is he went east over the river.  “As he looked, he saw a well in the field.”  I should remind you of why he’s going this way, you remember back in Genesis 27:43, when his mother Rebekah found that Esau was out to kill Jacob because he had pretended he was Esau and had stolen the birthright and the blessing.  In Genesis 27:43, Rebekah says, “Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran.”  You see, that was east of where he was at that time, “And stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away; until your brother’s anger turns away, and he forgets what you have done to him; then I will send, and fetch you from there.  Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?’”  That’s why Jacob sets out towards Haran.

In Verse 2, “As he looked, he saw a well in the field, and lo, 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, 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 upon the mouth of the well.”  This well was probably one with a very large stone on top of it to keep the sand out and then a smaller stone which was still quite large covering the mouth of it.  It was unlike the other stone that was talked about in Abraham’s day but that’s the way it was and then they all waited until all the sheep had gathered and then they rolled the stone away.  And normally it took two or three of them and of course, Jacob was a very strong person, strong physically as well as his natural strength that he had in his personality.

And so in Verse 4, “Jacob said to them, ‘My brothers, where do you come from?’”  Because of course he was looking for his relatives.  “They said, ‘We are from Haran.’  He said to them, ‘Do you know Laban the son of Nahor?’”  Now, he was actually the grandson of Nahor, he was the son of Bethuel, but it was a way they had of speaking.  In Hebrew they talked about you as the son of your grandfather.  “Do you know Laban the son of Nahor?’  They said, ‘We know him.’  He said to them, ‘Is it well with him?’”  Shalom, is there peace with him?  “They said, ‘It is well; and see, Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep!’”  God always has everything organized, in your life nothing happens by chance.  God has it planned.

“He said, ‘Behold, it is still high day, it is not time for the animals to be gathered together.’”  In other words really we shouldn’t water them but still he thought to himself, still the manipulator, “I want to talk to the girl on my own so water the sheep and go pasture them.  Now go on guys, water your sheep and I’ll speak to the girl.”  “But they said, ‘We cannot until all the flocks are gathered together.’”  They wouldn’t cooperate, “And the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well; then we water the sheep.’  While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep; for she kept them.  Now when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother.’”  So he moved the stone away by his strength.  “Then Jacob kissed Rachel,” and he was beginning to soften.  He had gone from riches in his father’s house to poverty now and he was among strangers and often it is so with us. 

I don’t know about you, it does seem God has to break us, doesn’t it?  It does seem there are strengths in us that God has to break just down into weeping.  There’s no way but disaster upon disaster and there’s no way to do it.  And you like to think, “Oh, there is another way, there is a better way,” but do you see it’s usually not that we don’t see the thing, it is that our natural strength is so strong that it keeps going even when we know it shouldn’t.  That’s why you talk about it being broke.  It has to be broken in us.  It’s so strong within us that until it’s broken we just out with it.  I could explain to you what you do, you could explain to me what I do, and yet I still do it.  It’s so strong in us  -- it’s second nature to us that God has to break it by almost a rock on stone continually until we are afraid to speak.  That’s it.  Until we are so afraid to speak at all that we rest in God and we only say what he tells us to say. 

Loved ones, it seems it has to go that way you know.  So, most of us have to be brought to this place.  He was being softened and still, of course, was not a broken man yet but he was softening.  “Then Jacob kissed Rachel,” touched with the fact that here, right here somehow or other God had arranged for him right immediately to meet his relative.  “Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and wept aloud.  And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kinsman.” So glad, of course, to see somebody again that was related to him, “And that he was Rebekah’s son; and she ran and told her father.”  And then we meet this dear guy that was Jacob’s own medicine.  This was the one that God used and we’ll have the Laban’s in our life and when you come up against them you just have to bear them.  God is teaching you something through them.

He was a chancer if ever there was one and could outdo Jacob at manipulation.  “When Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister’s son, he ran to meet him, and embraced him and kissed him.” He was just as good as Jacob at that.  “And brought him to his house.  Jacob told Laban all these things.” He told him how things had happened to him back home and how things had gone.  “And Laban said to him, ‘Surely,’” and he really meant it, “You are my bone and my flesh!’”  You’re just like me, “And he stayed with him a month.  Then Laban said to Jacob,” and here comes the old businessman in him, “Then Laban said to Jacob, ‘Because you are my kinsman,’” of course very generous, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing?”  And it sounds very good you know, “Oh, you’re going to pay me?”  But really Laban did not want the kind of gratitude relationship because a gratitude relationship has its weaknesses.  I mean, the other guy can say to himself, “Now, I’ve worked for you for years now you owe me something,” and so Laban didn’t want that.

But he puts it in these terms, “You are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing?”  Really, he wanted to get him on a paying basis right away so he wouldn’t feel he owed him anything but he presented it, “Now, you’re my kinsman I want to pay you as well I don’t want you to serve me for nothing.”  “Tell me, what shall your wages be?’  Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.  Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful and lovely.”  So Leah was not the most beautiful one, Rachel was the most beautiful and the strongest one.  “Jacob loved Rachel; and he said, ‘I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.’  Laban said, ‘It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.’”  And so he was so pleased apparently.  “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.”  And it just seemed to go so fast the seven years.

“Then Jacob said to Laban, ‘Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.’  So Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast.”  And even still among the Bedouins, the bridegroom will go to bed first and he will be there and the wife then will come in in the darkness or with her veil still on.  So she’ll lay down beside him and he will not see her at all and it’s connected up presumably with the whole modesty with which they conduct themselves to each other and so still they do that and that’s what happened here of course.  “But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her.  (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.)  And in the morning, behold, it was Leah; and Jacob said to Laban, ‘What is this you have done to me?’”  Laban could have said, “What you’ve done to your father and what you’ve done so often in your life, that’s what I’ve done to you,” but he didn’t.  “What is this you have done to me?  Did I not serve with you for Rachel?  Why then have you deceived me?” 

Of course, God knew because God was trying to break Jacob himself of his own manipulating and dishonest ways.  “Laban said, ‘It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the first-born.’”  Well, that was bluff.  If that was the case, he could have explained that before the deal was made but he pretends, ‘It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the first-born.  Complete the week of this one,’” that means not a week of seven years but just a week, the week was a week of celebration of the wedding.  “Complete the week of this one,” with Leah, “And we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.”  So Laban was a manipulator and a deceiver.  Jacob must have been beginning to waken up.  “Jacob did so, and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to wife.  (Laban gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her maid.)  So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years.”

Now it wasn’t, loved ones, that bigamy was right in those days.  It was probably before there was any law about bigamy.  Later on in Leviticus, in fact you might like to look at it in Leviticus 18:18, presumably partly because of this experience, God made it very clear that this was a sin what they were about to do.  So it wasn’t because it was right or because it was God’s way of having enough sons to head up the tribes of Israel.  Leviticus 18:18, “And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is yet alive.”  So that became a law in Israel. 

It wasn’t a law at the time this occurred but it became a law so it wasn’t that God’s will was every bigamy of this kind and it wasn’t that it was justified because it was God’s way of bringing the leaders of Israel into existence.  It was probably more because Jacob was wrong right from the beginning.  He was drawn to the outward appearance of Rachel and he was being dominated by what he wanted and the pleasure he was going to have and so God allowed this to come about so that he would see the thing working out as it did work out and all the jealousy and agony that followed.

So it’s probably that God allowed him to do this and it ties up with our own lives.  Yeah,  we do get ourselves into the soup at times but God does not really want for us.  If you say to me, “Will God give you a second best?”  Well, I think you can force God into giving you a second best.  He obviously gave a second best to the Israelites when they said, “We want a king.  We want a king.”  And God said, “No, you don’t need a king.”  Then finally he gave them a king and really there was only one good king.  David was about the only good king.  You know, there was Saul and Solomon and all the other kings that followed that brought chaos. 

Yes. loved ones, I think it’s idealistic to say that God never gives you a second best.  I think you can force God into a second best.  I think many of the things that we go through are not God’s first bests for us.  All you can say is God is continually working all things according to the counsel of his will.  He’s continually redeeming the situation, he’s continually bringing it around into the plan for your life.  One thing you can know at this present time, God is working what is happening to you around for good to bring about his original plan in your life and that’s a great blessing.  That God is doing that. 

But yes, you can force yourself into the same kind of situation as Jacob did, “And served Laban for another seven years.”  Then in Verse 31, the lesson wasn’t ended here the medicine kept coming, “When the Lord saw that Leah was hated,” because Jacob preferred Rachel which was wrong, it was the old natural strength, “I’m going to have the girl I want,” “When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren.  And Leah conceived and bore a son.”  It doesn’t matter what you do with your natural strength you will not bring about God’s will.  God will have his own way.  God alone can make things happen.  “And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben.  For she said, ‘Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.’”  And she, dear love her, kept feeling, “You know maybe I’ll get my husband’s love.”  “She conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also’; and called his name Simeon.”  The Lord has heard me, 'shama' in Hebrew means ‘to hear.’  “Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, ‘Now this time my husband will be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons’; therefore his name was called Levi.”  It means ‘attached.’  “And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord’ therefore she called his name Judah,” God be praised.  “Then she ceased bearing.”  And yet Jacob still did not love her and so his life continued in that way and continually God had to deal with him as we’ll see next Sunday again.  God had to deal with him to bring him to the end of himself.

The things that are happening in your life, take a good look at them, don’t resent them.  Ask the Lord, “Lord, are you trying to tell me something here?  Are you trying to break me of something here that I need to have taken out of my life so that I can begin to have faith in you?” And the Lord will answer you.  Let us pray.

Dear Father, we would each one come before you tonight and ask you that question. Lord, especially of the things that happen to us or that we get ourselves into that are just messes.  Lord, especially those arguments that we get into with loved ones or colleagues.  We go right down the same path week after week it seems.  Lord, what are you trying to tell us there?  Father, what are you saying through the predicaments that we have worked ourselves into in job, or work, or finances about our own natural strength there?  Lord, we know it’s your way to bring us to pastures of peace besides still waters and in green pastures. [Psalm 23:2]

Lord, when we get ourselves entangled in thorns and thickets, and we get ourselves in rocky places, Father what is it in us that brings us into these situations?  Lord, open our blind eyes, open our deaf ears, come through to us dear Father and break us.  Lord, we would say that, whatever it takes, whatever death or dying it takes, will you break us of these natural strengths, of these independent personalities that are continually getting in your way and preventing you doing your work.  Lord, will you break us and bring us into that sweet and tender place of peaceful faith where we are at last able to be used by you because your strength is made perfect in our weakness. 

And dear Father, we want to thank you that all these strengths that we were born with are not really necessary for you to get your work done.  All you need in us is a unfailing faith that you are working and that you have achieved everything in Jesus and that everything is already conquered and resolved in him.  We thank you Lord that as we believe that we can even walk around the Jericho walls and they’ll fall flat.  So, Lord, we thank you for all the working that you’re doing in our circumstances to bring us into this rest of faith where we rest from our labors and we are at last able to be used by you to do your kingdom work. 

We thank you Lord, for men like Jacob who came through these agonies and eventually came through to victory and we thank you that we have to walk the same way.  So we would give thanks in all circumstances for all things for this is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus.  We would no longer, our Father, resent hard things and hard situations.  We’re going to start giving you thanks for them Lord.  We’re going to stop resenting the sad things that happen or the opposition that we face, or the obstacles.  We’re going to stop regarding those as simply Satan’s work and we’re going to start thanking you for those Lord and opening our hearts to you so that we may begin to learn as fast as possible what you have to teach us. 

So Lord, this coming week whatever the situation, whatever the difficulty, however sad or however overwhelming the obstacle, we’re going to give thanks for all things and all circumstances because this is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus and you’re working your victory in us through these.  Thank you Lord for that.  Pray for peace and rest for each of us this week as we go through the days of our lives for your glory. 

Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with each one of us now and ever more.  Amen.