I think this time I will read the entire passage. Normally, I would just break it up and read the sections that we're gonna look at, but it's kind of one story, so I'll just read it, and then we'll make comment on it. So, Genesis chapter 29, starting in verse 31, reading all the way through chapter 30, verse 24. When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. So Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, the Lord has surely looked on my affliction. Now, therefore, my husband will love me. Then she conceived again and bore a son, and said, Because the Lord has heard that I am unloved, he has therefore given me this son also. So she called his name Simeon. She conceived again and bore a son, and said, Now this time my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi. And she conceived again, and bore a son, and said, Now I will praise the Lord. Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she stopped bearing. Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister, and said to Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was aroused against Rachel, and he said, Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? So she said, here is my maid Bilhah, go into her and she will bear a child on my knees, that I also may have children by her. Then she gave him Bilhah her maid as wife, and Jacob went into her. And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then Rachel said, God has judged my case, and he also has heard my voice and given me a son. Therefore she called his name Dan. And Rachel's maid Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, With great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and indeed I have prevailed. So she called his name Naphtali. When Leah saw that she had stopped bearing, she took Zilpah her maid, and gave her to Jacob as wife. And Leah's maid Zilpah bore Jacob a son. Then Leah said, A troop comes. So she called his name Gad. And Leah's maid, Zilpah, bore Jacob a second son. Then Leah said, I am happy for the daughters who will call me blessed. So she called his name Asher. Now Reuben went in the days of the wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother, Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes. But she said to her, is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he will lie with you tonight for your son's mandrakes. When Jacob came out of the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, You must come in to me, for I have surely hired you with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night. And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. Leah said, God has given me my wages because I have given my maid to my husband. So she called his name Issachar. Then Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. And Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my husband will dwell with me because I have borne him six sons. So she called his name Zebulun. Afterwards, she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah. Then God remembered Rachel and God listened to her and opened her womb and she conceived and bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach. So she called his name Joseph and said, the Lord shall add to me another son. Okay. So there you have it. should we call this like the battle of the wombs? That's kind of what it feels like, right? You've got these womb battles going on here. This arms race. So last time, which would have been about two weeks ago, We looked at the first part of chapter 29 where Jacob was deceived by his uncle Laban. This is Jacob going out to get a wife. His mom, Rebecca, sends him back home. He travels back home. Of course, he had that dream in Bethel of the stairway to heaven there. And then he makes it to Paddan Aram, and he meets up with his uncle Laban after his eye is captured by Rachel and her beauty. And we're told that Rachel is a very beautiful woman, beautiful of form and appearance, the scriptures say. So Jacob, of course, does the macho man thing and does some things to try to impress the gal like guys like to do when they're young and strong. Of course, he's not young. He's like 77 years old, but still. And then, of course, Uncle Lavin comes and brings him into the house and they make this arrangement for, you know, Jacob's wages. Laban says to Jacob, it's not right that you should stay here and not receive anything. So what name your wages? And of course, Jacob's like, I will work for you seven years for your daughter, Rachel. And Laban's like, great, that's a wonderful idea. So he does that. And as we saw last time, of course, those seven years just passed, right? As if it were a day, it says. And Jacob labored blissfully expecting Rachel until the night of the wedding, and then Laban pulls the old bait-and-switch, right? Pulls the old bait-and-switch with Jacob at night when he's not paying attention. And he is married to Rachel, wakes up in the morning, and there's Leah, good old weak-eyed Leah. That's how the scriptures describe her, that her eyes were weak. In other words, she probably wasn't much to write home about physically speaking. And there you have it. So now what you're going to see here in this passage is really kind of something that plays out of what you see at the end of the passage that we saw last time in chapter 29, verse 30, where it says, And Jacob went into Rachel, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. That's going to play out a lot in this chapter. As we look in this passage, remember, Jacob is in exile as Israel, right? He's gonna have his name changed to Israel in a few chapters. He is in exile, and exile is the time of testing for God's people, and Jacob's being tested here, and he's being tested in a particular way to mold his character, right? Jacob the deceiver was deceived. And God is going to use that to shape and mold his patriarch here. So God's refining process of Jacob's life continues in this passage. But something else is going on in this passage too. The promise that has been given to Abraham, the promise that has been given to Isaac, and then the promise that was eventually given to Jacob is one in which God says to each one of those, I will make you fruitful, right? I will build your house. You will have many descendants, many offspring. Now Abraham had one son, right? Isaac had two sons, and now Jacob is going to have Well, in this passage, 11 sons, one more comes later, but he's gonna have 12 sons. And through this, again, God is fulfilling his promises of offspring. And here we see God building the house of Jacob. And quite literally, you could say here, God is building Israel, because these 12 sons will be the forefathers of all of the people of Israel. If you remember when we went through the book of Revelation, At the end of that, we're told about the heavenly Jerusalem that comes down from above and it has 12 gates. Do you remember what the 12 gates have the names of? The 12 sons of Jacob, right? And the 12 foundations are the 12 disciples. So the number 12, of course, symbolic of God's people. Here we see the 12 sons of Jacob will be symbolic of God's people. They are Israel. and God is building Israel. That is what we see here in this passage. So through envy, through contention, through strife, through all of these nasty negative emotions that you see going on in this passage, God builds the house of Israel and he's building it through Leah and Rachel. So that's why the title of the sermon is The House that Leah and Rachel Built. I pulled that out of a book, and I also pulled it out of Ruth chapter 4. We're going to look at that at the end of the lesson. You've got five points. They should go pretty quickly. You see here that the Lord saw Leah. Rachel saw her barrenness. Leah saw her barrenness. God listens to Leah, and then God remembers Rachel. Those are the five points this evening. Now again, as we come into this passage, we got to keep the context of what's happening here in Jacob's life. We need to keep that context before us. Jacob the deceiver was himself deceived by his uncle Laban. Jacob labored for Rachel seven years. And then when he pulled the bait and switch, had to labor again seven more years for Rachel for real this time, right? So he labored seven years, gets Leah, labored seven more years, gets Rachel. So now he's been here in exile for going on 14 years. When it's all said and done, and we look at the next passage in a couple of weeks, It would have been 14 years that Jacob has been, probably longer actually, probably closer to the full 20 years that he's been in exile, if you will. So this puts Jacob in a situation in which he was sort of forced to labor for another seven years to get Rachel because of the bait and switch that Laban pulls. And as we know, Jacob was enamored with Rachel. He had no interest in Leah. And that's why, as we saw at the end of chapter 29, verse 30, Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah. Now, our passage opens following that. Oh, did you have a question? My ear just opened. Now I can hear. Oh, now? Okay. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord. Okay, so as we come into this passage tonight, as I said, this is gonna flow right out of what we just read. So Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, and then it opens up in verse 31, when the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opens her womb, but Rachel was barren. So here, even though Leah was unloved by Jacob, The Lord sees this, right? Remember, as we've been seeing throughout Genesis, right? The Lord hears, the Lord remembers, the Lord sees all these things. Whenever somebody is in some kind of distress, whenever somebody is in some kind of trouble, the Lord remembers, the Lord hears, the Lord sees. That's why Ishmael is called Ishmael, because the Lord heard the cries. That's why... Hagar calls God the God who sees because he saw the troubles, right? God remembered Noah when he was on the ark after the flood. So God sees these things. He hears these things. He remembers these things. So he sees that Leah was unloved. Now, if you have an English Standard Version, it says that Leah was what? Hated, right? Hated. You're like, wow, he hated her? Well, that's the translation that the ESV uses. That's what the King James uses. The word can mean to hate or be hated. In context though, and given the meaning of what's going on here, I think the New King James and other translations, I think they capture the true sense of this word when they say unloved. In fact, the Christian standard Bible says neglected. Okay, so in other words, Jacob focused all of his attention on Rachel and just kind of left Leah to do whatever. He neglected her. She was unloved. The point being is that the Lord sees this. He sees this unloving, neglectful treatment of Leah. And though Leah is not sinless in this, right? She's like anybody else. She's born with sin. She is, in a large sense, the innocent party in all of this, right? Did Leah ask to have this happen to her? No, right? I mean, it was Laban's way of getting more free labor out of Jacob, really, is what's going on here. And Leah is just a pawn in this struggle between Laban and Jacob. Leah is a pawn here. She's innocent in this matter. And because of that, she's unloved. It's not her fault that this is happening to her. The point being, the Lord sees this. And the idea of the Lord seeing here is meant to capture the sense that the Lord is loving and compassionate. So whereas Jacob is unloving, whereas Jacob is neglectful, whereas, if you want to take the literal translation, whereas Jacob is hating her, the Lord is being compassionate to her. The Lord is loving her. The Lord is being gracious unto her. This is a theme that runs all throughout scripture. The Lord loves the unlovable, right? The Lord loves the outcast. The Lord loves those who are on the fringes of society. Again, I pointed this out before, right? In Genesis 16, verse 13, Hagar says, Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are the God who sees. For she said, Have I also seen Him here who sees me? Same thing in Exodus chapter 3 verse 7. I am the Lord. This is the Lord speaking to Moses out of the burning bush I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters for I know Their sorrows the Lord is not Neglectful, whereas Jacob is neglectful, the Lord is not neglectful. Now, it may seem from our perspective oftentimes that the Lord is neglectful, right? You know, we wait long for things, we struggle with things. You know, Job, if you think of the story of Job, Job cried out to the Lord, vindicate me, vindicate me, I'm righteous in all this. And it's like the Lord is not hearing him. Well, the Lord's hearing him, but the Lord is gonna respond in his own time. So the Lord took notice of Leah. He sees her, sees that she's unloved, and what does he do? He opens her womb. What happens with Rachel? She remains barren. Now, a couple of things to note. The Lord is the sovereign over the womb, okay? We've seen this before. If you remember back in chapter 20, when Isaac goes into, I think it's the town of Gerar, and Abimelech is there, and this is when he, does what his father does and says to his wife, Rebecca says, say that you're my sister, right? And then she gets taken by Abimelech. And it says that the Lord closed all the wombs of the people in the town, right? All the wombs of the women. And then when Abimelech gives Rachel or Rebecca back to Isaac, it says, then the Lord opened their wombs. So the Lord is sovereign over the womb. So the fact that Leah bears children is because, as it says here, the Lord opened her womb. The reason Rachel was barren is because the Lord had not opened her womb. So the first thing we note here is that God is sovereign over the womb. But the second thing we note here is that Rachel being barren isn't or at least shouldn't be seen as some form of punishment from God. Again, in the case of Bemelech, the Lord did close those wombs in that town temporarily as a kind of a sign of judgment. But here with Rachel, this is not or at least shouldn't be seen as a punishment from the Lord. We've noted this before, that all of the wives of the patriarchs have been barren for some point of time, right? We saw this in Genesis 11, verse 30, when Abram is mentioned, and his wife Sarai is mentioned, it says that she was barren and bore him no children. We see this in chapter 25, verse 21 of Rebekah when she's first married to Isaac. She's barren for like 20 years and Isaac has to pray to the Lord to open Rebekah's womb. So barrenness is kind of a common theme with the wives of the patriarchs. And the reason behind that, at least in part, is to show that the children that are born, these children of promise, they come because of the Lord. They come because of the Lord. Isaac was, in a sense, a miracle child, if you will, right? Born to Sarah when she was 90 plus years old. You can't really say that Jacob and Esau were miracle children because Rebekah wasn't really all that old, but still, after 20 years of barrenness, that is, again, to show that God is the one who is doing these things. God is the one who is bringing salvation into the world through these children. But the opening of Leah's womb here is a sign to Leah of blessing and favor upon her. God is showing his blessing. God is showing his favor upon the one who is unloved. And then in the verses that follow, verses 32 to 35, we see in succession here the four sons that she bears. And each son is given a name that reflects Leah's experiences in this relationship that she has with Jacob and with her sister as a co-wife, right? So we see here these four sons and the names paint a picture of her plight in this family. The first one in verse 32 is Reuben. And each one of these names here will have a footnote that'll tell you what it means literally in the Hebrew. And here it says, see a son. That's what Reuben means, see a son. And here Leah gives the name Reuben to that son because it says, the Lord has seen, he's looked upon my affliction. Now, therefore, my husband will love me. Where's Leah's heart in all of this? She bears a son for what purpose? to get her husband's affection, right? I am unloved. If I bear him children, maybe now he will love me. And then we see the second son in verse 33, Simeon, which means hear or hearing or heard. And she says here, the Lord has heard that I am unloved or hated. He has therefore given me this son also. So she calls his name Simeon. The third son is born is Levi. And it says, now, this time, my husband will become attached to me. There's a little significance, I think, to this word, because if you remember way, way, way, way, way back in Genesis chapter 2, when Adam and Eve are in the garden, And God gives Eve to Adam. What does Adam say? He says, this is woman. She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. And it says that the two that he, you know, it says that a man will leave his family and he will cling to his wife and the two will become one flesh, right? That idea of clinging is to attach. It's to kind of like stick together like glue. And here Leah is hoping that her husband who is supposed to be Attached to her will actually attach himself to her, right? Now maybe Jacob will be attached to me since I have now born him three sons. And then we see the fourth son, Judah, in verse 35, and she conceived again. Now, obviously, I'm guessing some time has gone by, right? She's not just spitting these babies out one right after the other. You know, at least four or five years, I'm guessing, is going by here, unless they're all Irish twins or whatever the case may be. Judah comes out. Notice how her tenor changes a little bit, right? The first three sons, now my husband will love me. Now the Lord has heard that I am unloved. Now maybe my husband will become attached to me. What does she do with the fourth son? She calls him Judah, which means praise. And then she says, now I will praise the Lord. So maybe you see a bit of a shift in her mindset, in her attitude. Her focus is like, the Lord is blessing me, I'm going to just praise his name. So she perhaps resigns herself to accept her fate, that she's unloved. I've born Jacob three sons, it hasn't changed his attitude toward me, so maybe I'll just stop worrying about how Jacob is gonna feel about me, and maybe I'll just praise the Lord this time. So there's obviously some relational strife going on in this family. And there's going to be more to follow. But I think at least for this first section, the main point to take away is this. God saw Leah's affliction. And God here is using this bad situation here to tie into what we said this morning in the sermon. God is using the bad that's going on here in this family, an unloved wife, and what we're gonna see later on is this strife between the two sisters and strife between Jacob and his wives and everything. God is using this and he is using this to build, again, the house of Israel. He is building the vehicle, Israel, that will be that which brings salvation into the world, and he's doing so through the sin and the dysfunction of this family. The second point to take away here is, though Leah may have been unloved, think about two of the sons that she bears here. Ruben, he's kind of a tool after a while, right? He ends up, you know, trying to, I think he ends up sleeping with his wife's concubines, right? And he's like, okay. And then, of course, Simeon, he's a bit of a hothead, right? As we'll see when his sister is raped, he and Levi go and they slaughter an entire town full of people. But Notice the other two sons. What is Levi, aside from being the co-conspirator with Simeon to slaughter all of the Shechemites, what is Levi known for? The priesthood, exactly. Moses is a descendant of Levi. Aaron is a descendant of Levi. Through the loins of Levi come Moses, the great deliverer of God's people, comes Aaron, the first high priest, and comes all of the people who will serve in the tabernacle. Levi is the father, if you will, of this priestly line. And of course, what is Judah known for? he's the king right he's the one who will he is the great great great great great great great great grandfather maybe a couple more greats thrown in there of King David who is then the father of Solomon who is then the father of a whole line of kings and is himself the great great great great great great great great great and play a few other greats grandfather of Jesus, right? So you've got the priesthood through Levi, and you've got the kingly line and the Savior coming through Judah. Leah is the mother of these people, right? So, you know, we don't often talk about that, right? But there's this passage in 1 Timothy that talks about how Women will be saved through childbearing. It doesn't mean that you're saved by faith or by bearing children. What it means is that the stigma of the fall, because it was through Eve that Adam sinned, the stigma of the fall is, in a sense, erased through childbearing because these women, as they become mothers, they are so formative and instrumental in the raising of these kids. And here Leah becomes the mother of these two sons who themselves are the progenitors of the priesthood and the kings and of course Jesus himself. So that's the Lord sees, the Lord saw Leah. Now Rachel here, what does she see? Well, she sees her barrenness. We saw earlier on that Rachel was barren, now in verse 30. Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and said to Jacob, give me children or else I die. Give me children or else I die. So while Leah is filling up the nursery here in Pat and Aram, Rachel is, her biological clock is ticking, right? Leah keeps squeezing out babies and Rachel's like, where's mine? When's it gonna be my turn? I wanna add a child to this nursery. Give me children or I die. She envies her sister. She envies her sister. That word there means to be jealous, to be envious. NIV says she became jealous. And we know how bad jealousy is as an emotion, right? Because it was jealousy and envy. that prompted these sons to mistreat Joseph, right? Because of Joseph's favored status with Jacob, it was the envy of the other 11 brothers or 12 brothers that motivated them to at least initially plot to kill Joseph and then eventually sell him into slavery. So jealousy and envy, it's a disastrous, it's a ruinous emotion. And then, of course, then Rachel demands to Jacob, give me children or I die, as if it's Jacob's, as if it's somehow in Jacob's power to do this. And what does Jacob say? I love his response. Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? Now remember, Jacob loved Rachel, okay? Yeah, now he's getting a little annoyed here because Rachel's like, I want children. And Jacob's like, what do you want me to do about this? That's like, I'm doing everything I can, I'm doing my part. What do you want me to do? I'm not in the place of God. In other words, what he's saying is like, look, your beef is not with me. God has closed your womb. I'm not God, I can't do this. Now what does Jacob not do that his father Isaac did when Rebekah was barren? Does Jacob pray? No. He's like, what do you want me to do about it? That's his response. Isaac's response was to kneel in prayer to the Lord for the barrenness of his wife Rebekah. Jacob is like, what do you want me to do about this? Now, again, this kind of continues to highlight the theme that I've been looking at here is that Jacob is still a work in progress. Jacob still has room to grow as we all do. So what does Rachel do? All right, Jacob is not being very empathetic with her. So she, like her grandmother-in-law, does, right? Let's do the, let's do the, let's do the, let's do the handmade tale plan here where we'll take my maid and maybe I'll have children through my maid right because that works so brilliantly for Abraham and Sarah back in Exodus 16 or Genesis 16. So Rachel says here take Bilhah. So now Think about this now with me. Jacob went to find a wife. Laban tricks him, and now he's got two wives. And now with the giving of Bilhah the maid, he now has three wives. As we'll see in a moment, he's going to get Zilpah, the other maid. He's going to have four. He went out to get one wife and ends up with four. Okay. I don't think he planned that. I don't think he wanted that. And I don't think he's happy with that. And we'll see that in a moment too. But anyway, we see here Bilhah goes into Jacob. And now Bilhah gives birth to sons. And notice how it says here in verse three, she will bear a child on my knees. In other words, she's engaging in surrogacy here is what's happening here. So these children, though Bilhah is the one who bears them, they are being born in the name of Rachel. So as she bears these children, Rachel then names them. So she gives birth to two sons, and the names Rachel gives these children, just like the names that Leah gives to her children, they are descriptive of her experience. So the first one that comes out is Dan. We see this in verse 6. Then Rachel said, God has judged my case, and he has also heard my voice and given me a son. Well, technically. Therefore she called his name Dan. Dan's name means judge. Rachel claims that God has judged her case and given her a son. In other words, He has seen my plight, and He has vindicated me through the giving of this son. And then she bears a second son, or Bilhah bears a second son. In verse 8, then she gives a name with great rustlings. I have rustled with my sister, and indeed I have prevailed. So she called his name Naphtali, which means my rustling. Rachel here is looking at these children and it's sort of like Race right it's a competition now. She says I prevailed. I mean last time I checked it's still four to two Right and technically it's four to zero because the first four are natural to Leah But hey, you know I guess the point is is that Leah has stopped and now Rachel least is getting these surrogate children coming in so anyway God sees Rachel sees this as a wrestling match with her sister, so she is in a fight with her sister to out bear children for Jacob. Now, I don't want to make light of bear-ness. It's a horrible experience, I'm sure. The pain of not being able to bear a child when you desperately want one is intense. It's an extreme emotion. But here we also get a glimpse into the heart of Rachel. It's not a very pretty picture, right? Rachel may have been described as easy on the eyes, right? Beautiful form and appearance, but there's some sin in that heart of hers, right? So nice to look at on the outside, but inside, Like all of us, there's that sin that's in the heart of us, as Jesus says in Matthew 15. It's not eating with dirty hands that defiles us. It's what comes out of the mouth, from the heart, that defiles us. Rachel here is harboring anger. She's angry at Jacob. She's angry at her sister. She's frustrated. She's got envy in her heart. And ultimately, Like all sin, where's all sin ultimately directed at? God, right? As David says in Psalm 51, against you and you only have I sinned and done evil in your sight. So she's angry and frustrated and envious in her heart toward God and Jacob and Leah. So now that brings us to verses nine through 13, as Leah sees her barrenness. So Rachel saw her barrenness, now Leah sees her barrenness. Verse nine, when Leah saw that she had stopped bearing children, she took Zilpah, her maid, and gave her to Jacob as wife. So let's double the pleasure here, okay? Let's see if we can one up one another on the surrogacy bandwagon here. So we've got, Leah here, who is unloved, she stopped bearing. And when she sees this now, she wants to get in on the surrogacy program. So even though she had given Jacob four sons through her own open womb, that hadn't really changed the relationship with Jacob. Jacob still did not really seem to show any favor to Leah. And if anything, it sort of escalated and intensified this relationship now between Jacob and his wives. So the situation's really starting to get messed up here. And now that she sees that she had stopped bearing children of her own, she gives Zilpah to Jacob and two more sons come forth. And we see again, these names are again indicative of what's going on here. So in verse 10, Gad comes out and says, Leah says, a troop comes. So she called his name Gad. Now, some sources may say that Gad means fortune. Others say a troop. I think a troop comes seems to suggest reinforcements are coming, right? The cavalry is coming, all right? I've borne Jacob four sons. Rachel, through her maid, has given him two. All right, well, I've got some reinforcements coming. I've got an extra son now through surrogacy, and I'm up now five to two, right? This is the competition. I'm up five to two in all this. And then she bears another son through Zilpah. Zilpah bears another son in verse 13. Then she says, I'm happy. Again, now, that at least to me seems to indicate that perhaps Leah is kind of resigned to accepting her fate. Whereas when Judah was born, she praised the Lord here. She says, I'm happy and people will call me blessed. So she called his name Asher, which means happy or blessed. And she makes a remark that the ladies of the town will call her happy. This is kind of reminds me of in the book of Ruth, When Naomi, when Ruth is married to Boaz and Ruth bears a son to Boaz, and it's kind of in a sense a surrogacy there because the idea was a leveret marriage that Boaz would bear children that would belong to Naomi through Ruth. And when that happens, we read in Ruth 4.14 that the women said to Naomi, blessed be the Lord who has not left you this day without a close relative and may his name be famous in Israel. So here Leah is kind of pulling on that theme too as well. She says, the ladies of the town will see me and call me blessed because I have borne another son to Jacob. So the tensions are getting worse and worse in Jacob's house. Leah, who had a moment of praise and peace, when Judah was born, now saw her own barrenness and lamented, and she's now engaging in this escalating arms race of children with Rachel. And what's happening here is the danger that we all kind of fall into from time to time, which is we start to see our hope and our deliverance, not from the Lord, but from our circumstances and our situation. And particularly in this cultural context in which Well, as Rachel said, give me children or else I die, right? I mean, that's how important children were in this culture. So here we see that Leah is starting, at least in danger of seeing her hope and how many children she can bear for Jacob as opposed to relying on the Lord. All right, fourthly, so we see that the Lord saw Leah Rachel saw her barrenness. Leah saw her barrenness. Now God listens to Leah in verses 14 through 21. Now you may be tempted to wonder if there's any hope for this dysfunctional family. Can any good come out of this? Well, yes. We're going to see this in a moment. But first you've got this kind of odd little side story with the Mandrakes in verses 14 through 16. Reuben, this is the firstborn, he's probably a young teenager at this point. Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes. But she said to her, is it a small matter that you've taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, therefore, he will lie with you tonight for your son's mandrakes. And when Jacob came out of the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, you must come into me, for I've surely hired you with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night. So it's an odd scenario. First of all, Mandrake, the Hebrew word literally means love apple. It's believed to be like an aphrodisiac, some kind of thing that will stimulate love, if you will. Now, maybe there's some truth there or not. The point is, that's what they believed, okay? That's what Reuben and Leah and Rachel believed, that this love apple, these mandrakes, have some kind of, you know, like a love potion, right? You know, what's the song from the 60s, Love Potion Number Nine, right? So here Reuben finds mandrakes, Rachel asks for the mandrakes, and then Leah and Rachel make an agreement. They barter mandrakes for a night with Jacob. And notice the tone of Leah's voice, right? Is it enough that you've stolen my husband away from me? Would you also take my mandrakes? And then Rachel says, you can sleep with him tonight. So again, that indicates that obviously while Jacob has laid with Leah, it's probably one of those where, well, he prefers Rachel over Leah, so he goes into Leah only when he has to, he goes into Rachel because he wants to. And then poor old Jacob, there's Jacob, working out in the field. He's like sweating, comes home, and he expects to see Rachel at the door, and there's Leah, and she says to him, you have to sleep with me tonight, because I bought you with my son's mandrakes. And Jacob's like, oh. He just like turns around, goes back out into the field, right? So anyway. Now he goes into her. Now, to show that God is gracious, it says here in verse 17, God listened, right? First God saw. Now God listens. What is he listening to? Well, he's listening to the heartache of Leah, right? Her heart's breaking. She's, again, in this marriage, not because she wanted to be here, but because she was a pawn in her dad's plans here, and she's trying to make the most of it, right? But here she is, she's unloved, she's now, I don't know what their family dynamic was before Jacob came on the scene. I don't know if there was tension between the two sisters. I don't know. You tell me, ladies, if you have sisters. If one of the sisters is prettier than the other one, is there usually some tension in the family there? I don't know. Anyway, the point is that the Lord hears this, and then he opens her womb again, and she bears Jacob two more sons and a daughter, so three more children all together. And notice that. How many children does that make now? Six sons and a daughter. Seven. You think there's anything significant about the number seven? I think there might be a little something significant about the seven, right? Completeness, right? She bears these seven children to him. So she conceives again and bore Jacob, sorry, a fifth son in verse 17. And again, these names, notice these names. Verse 18, Leah said, God has given me my wages because I've given my maid to my husband. So she called his name Issachar. Issachar means wages. Leah has worked hard to be loved by Jacob. So she sees Issachar as her payment, her wages. And then verse 19, she conceives and bears a sixth son. And Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my husband will dwell with me because I have born him six sons. Maybe now Jacob will love me. I have given him six sons. So she calls his name Zebulun. which means dwelling. So she acknowledges that she has received an endowment from the Lord, but she is still seeking after Jacob's affections. Now, spoiler alert. You've read through Genesis, I'm sure, multiple times, but I'm going to spoil a little bit of the story at the end. This is a beautiful picture of God's providence, I think, because Jacob does end up dwelling with Leah, and I'll tell you why. Chapter 49, verse 31 of Genesis, Jacob dies. And Jacob's bones are taken back to Israel because he dies in Egypt. He's taken back to the land of Canaan. And this is, remember where Abraham bought a cave to bury his family in, right? He buries Sarah there. Then when Abraham dies, he's buried there. When Rebekah and Isaac die, they're buried there. And it says here in chapter 49, verse 31 of Genesis, there they buried Abraham and Sarah, his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebekah, his wife. And Jacob says, I want to be buried there. He says, there I buried Leah. There I bury Leah. So even though Leah apparently is the unloved wife, you know, Rachel dies by giving birth to the second son, Benjamin, in the wilderness somewhere, right? And they just bury her where she dies. Leah gets to be buried in the family plot, right? She gets to be buried in the place which is still, at least at this point in time, still the only piece of land that the descendants of Abraham own in the promised land. And where does Jacob want to be buried? He doesn't say go find Rachel's tomb and bury me next to her. Bury me in my family plot where my dad is, where my grandfather is, where my mom and grandmother are, and where Leah is. So he ends up dwelling with her, right, for quite some time. And of course, in the final child that Leah buries to Jacob was a daughter named Dinah. We'll see more about her in Genesis chapter 34. So I don't want to spoil that one. So while Jacob didn't immediately seek to be polygamous, remember, he went to get a wife and ends up now with four. We see here the problems with polygamy and why God designed marriage to be between one man and one woman. We see that this is, probably normal in most polygamous relationships. King David, a man after God's own heart, bless his soul, how many wives did he have? Well, 10, 12, I don't know how many wives exactly he had. His son Solomon, the wisest of all men, how many wives did he have? A lot more. He had like 700 wives and 300 concubines. I like to make a joke with the men, imagine having that many mothers-in-law. 700 mothers-in-law. Just saying. It's the problem with polygamy. Now, again, Jacob didn't intend to do this, but this is what happened, and now we see the problems inherent with polygamy. And it's interesting to see how many men of God in the scriptures are actually polygamists. And you would think, well, didn't they know this? Well, they probably did. The problem is that, well, we're sinners, okay? We don't always do what we know is the right thing to do. We don't always do the best thing to do. All right, finally. God remembers Rachel. So just as God was gracious to Leah, God is also gracious to Rachel as he remembers her in verses 22 and following. Then God remembered Rachel and God listened to her, give me children or else I die, and opened her womb. And she conceived and bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach. So she called his name Joseph and said, the Lord shall add to me another son. Now that word remember, I kind of hinted at this earlier in the lesson tonight. It means to remember, to recall, to call to mind. And when God remembers, God is remembering something. What do you think God is remembering? Promises, right? Yeah, promises. He's remembering covenant. That's covenant language. God made a covenant with Noah, and in Genesis 8.1, after the flood was over, it says God remembered Noah. It's not like God forgot about Noah after he sent the flood. It's, oh, darn, I forgot about that dude on the boat. I better do something about, no. The idea of remembrance is calling to mind that God is remembering the covenant that he made with him. Same thing again with Exodus. In Exodus 2, verse 24, it says here, after the children of Israel are groaning because of their oppression, It says, God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. When God remembers, it takes on a covenantal flavor to it. So God remembers Rachel because he made a covenant with Jacob. God remembers Rachel, God listened to Rachel, and God opened Rachel's womb. Three verbs. Who's the subject of the verbs? God is the subject of the verbs. God is doing all the work here. He remembers, he listens, and he opens. God is the subject of all these verbs. Rachel then rejoices. when the reproach of her barrenness is taken away as she bears a son to Jacob and calls him Joseph. Joseph just means he will add, and God has added a son to Rachel. So here, even though she's still a little bit behind in the baby count, she now has one that she can call her own, one that is born out of her own womb. And Joseph is going to take on a particular importance in the narrative because when we get to Genesis chapter 37, the narrative then is going to flow through Joseph. He kind of takes on center stage after Jacob becomes older. Now, despite the failures in this family here, God is showing himself gracious. He's showing himself gracious to Jacob, Leah, Rachel, all of them, in fulfilling his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Genesis 28, verse 14, Again, this is God renewing the covenant with Jacob. And he says there, and your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. And in you and in your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. That was the promise that God made to Abraham. It's the promise that God reiterated to Isaac. And it's the promise that God now says to Jacob. God is fulfilling his promise. through all these children that are being born to Jacob through his wives and their concubines. God is building the house of Israel. God is building the house of Israel through these two women. Now, I was looking back at it. We started our study in Genesis back in December of 2022, so it's almost been two years now since we've been in Genesis. Does it feel like it's been that long? Well, it doesn't feel that long because this is only the 39th study, right? Because we only do this every other week or so. But it's been two years since we've been here. Now, we've seen God do a lot of things already in 30 plus chapters of Genesis. We saw how God created everything out of nothing. And now we see God building the house of Israel through this dysfunctional family. God builds and works with nothing in creation, and God works with broken, messy, dysfunctional, envious, strifeful, angry, bitter people in redemption. Why does God do that? Because who else can God work with in redemption? He's got nothing but broken, messy, dysfunctional people to work through. Now, of course, His one and only begotten Son, Jesus, is without sin. But before Jesus even comes onto the stage, you've got to build the house of Israel. And God is working through all of these broken people to do that. But let's not lose sight. of the fact that as interesting as the narrative of Jacob and his wives may be, behind the scenes here, God is moving his plan of redemption along. This is the plan of redemption. This is the story of salvation. Nothing in the Bible is wasted. Nothing in the Bible is filler. Nothing in the Bible is just a throwaway fact. It's all here. It's all inspired for a purpose. Even the story, it seems silly, right? You have to sleep with me tonight. And Jacob's like weary from working in the field. The thing with the mandrakes and so on and so forth. It seems kind of silly. It seems like it's filler, but it's not. God is being faithful in bringing about our redemption through this broken family to bring us eventually to Christ. Now, where's the good news in this passage? Where's the gospel in this passage? We see glimpses of grace. We see glimpses of good news in here with the births of Judah, right? Judah praised the Lord. Joseph, the Lord has taken away my reproach. And these two sons will be the focal point of the narrative beginning in Genesis 37, mainly on Joseph. But Judah plays a big, important role as well. But I want to focus on a few things here before we close for tonight. Recall Rachel's reaction when Judah was born. When Judah was born, she praised the Lord. Leah found a moment of peace. She found a moment of satisfaction in which she stopped focusing on trying to please Jacob and gave praise to God's goodness rather than Jacob's lack of affection. When Joseph was born, Rachel in a way praises the Lord, right? You have removed my reproach. She acknowledges God's sovereignty over the womb. And she's just happy to have a kid at this point. Joseph, who will become Jacob's favorite son. Where have we seen that sin before? Just a few chapters back, right? You know, like father, like son. Isaac loved Esau. Rebekah loved Jacob. And here Jacob loves Joseph because Joseph is the son of his favorite wife. Joseph is ultimately going to become the salvation of his people as he provides for their needs during that time of famine. Joseph is going to be the instrument God uses to bring God's people into Egypt because Joseph will be sold into slavery. He's going to become second in command in Egypt. He's going to manage the handling of the famine. And he, you know, as we saw this morning in Genesis 50, Joseph says, God meant it for good, for the salvation of many people. So Joseph is going to work the salvation of his family as he provides during their needs for during this famine. Now Judah, we're going to see Judah in a little bit. Judah has a, you know, chapter 38 is kind of messy. We'll get to that when we get there. But Judah, He starts to play a bigger role in this too. Because what does Judah do at one point? If you remember during the famine story, Joseph is there and the sons go there to buy food and Joseph says, I want to see my younger brother, right? He says, go back and bring the younger brother. So the sons come back and Jacob's like, I've already lost Joseph. I'm not going to lose Benjamin. And the sons are like, well, the man said he won't give us any more food until he sees Benjamin so they wait and wait and wait and invite finally, you know, they go and what does Judah say? He says he says to his father he says look If anything happens to Benjamin, you know, I I will step in you know, you could take you could take it out on me What is Judah doing there? He's becoming he's he's he's forming. He's performing the duty of a substitute He's saying I will put my life in place of my younger brother Benjamin And maybe that's picturing Christ, who then becomes a substitute for all of us, right? He's the ultimate substitute, the one who will give his life as a ransom for many. Judah will be the conduit of salvation for the world through his ultimate grandson, Jesus. God is laying the work and the groundwork for salvation through the house that Leah and Rachel built. If you will, turn to Ruth chapter 4. I'm going to look at a couple more passages before we close. We're almost done. I want to look at Ruth chapter 4. We saw a verse out of it earlier, but the context of this verse is chapter 4, verse 11 is the one I want to look at. This is where Boaz redeems Ruth, and the first eight or nine verses is where Boaz negotiates with the no-name guy, right? He doesn't have a name, he's just the other redeemer. So I just call him the man with no name. The man who shall forever remain nameless because he wouldn't take up the task of being the kinsman redeemer. And after that negotiation, he gets the land and he gets Ruth as his wife. And the elders of the town are witness to this. That's what Boaz, he says, be witnesses now that I have done this. And in verse 11, all the people who are at the gate and the elders said, we are witnesses. The Lord make the woman who is coming to your house like Rachel and Leah, the two who built the house of Israel. And may you prosper in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. I only mention that verse because that verse is very telling to what we've seen here in this passage. This is centuries later, right? Centuries later as we're in the time of the judges now. And even then, the people are remembering that Israel is the house that Leah and Rachel built because of the sons, right? The sons are the 12 patriarchs of Israel. But also, I want to conclude with Paul's opening to the book of Romans. Because again, God is laying the groundwork for salvation through the house that Leah and Rachel built, which is Israel. And when Paul begins in Romans, he says this, he says, Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God, which he promised before through his prophets in the Holy Scripture. So Paul is calling attention to the fact that the gospel that I'm proclaiming is one that was promised way back in the Old Testament scriptures. And he says in verse three of chapter one, this gospel concerns his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. There's a lot that could be said in those two verses, but what I want to point out to you here is the fact that Paul says that Jesus was born, according to the flesh, he is the son of David. And that's where this is all leading, right? The house that Leah and Rachel built will eventually end up with David as the king, and then David will eventually give birth through a long line of generations to Jesus, the ultimate son. He is the son of David and also the son of God and he is the one who brings salvation and redemption for all of us. So what is God doing here? Where is the good news? God is working his plan of redemption through this dysfunctional family to bring salvation into the world. So I'll stop here for tonight.