I encourage you all to turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 29. Genesis chapter 29, verses 31 through 30, verse 24. Now, if the history of ancient Israel had been written by men rather like Rome's history was written by Virgil in the Aeneid. Everybody would be virtuous and stalwart who was on the right side. The men would all be heroic and valiant. They would never lie. They would never do anything disingenuous or dishonest. The women would all be super virtuous and pious as well, and ultimately there would be nothing that would smack of disgrace in the families. The Bible, however, was not written by men. It was written by men who were inspired by God, and it tells an accurate history of the origins of Israel, the 12 tribes. And sadly, it was not with perfect people that God was dealing. Because of the fall, it was with fallen people who acted in fallen ways. And that's recorded for us because it's an accurate representation of what these people did and the way that they lived. And it teaches us, if it teaches us anything, an important lesson that the hero of the Bible, the only one who is without sin, the only one who always did right, is God himself. He is the one who delivered despite the actions of his people, not because of them. Well, let's go ahead and pray and ask the Lord to bless our reading. and our hearing of His Word, and we will pray that He will help us to understand these things. Please join me. Sovereign Lord, as I come now to Your Word, I am mindful of the fact that I can't help to understand and to open this up without the benefit of Your Holy Spirit, and so I do pray, Lord, that for the sake of your people, your little lambs, that you would help me to understand and to exposit a right. Let me not say anything that is not in keeping with your word. I do pray, Lord, that as we read these things, we would not also sit censoriously thinking how much better we are, but remember that we too have the seeds of every sin in our own hearts, and that we could just as easily have done these things. We remember that we sinned in our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the garden. In a perfect situation, we failed. And so, Lord, none of us has a right to say we would have done any better. But let us learn from these things. Let us learn from them, at the very least, your steadfastness, the way that you keep your covenant promises. Now Lord, help us to be attentive, help us to put away those things that distract us and take us away, and help us to fix our attention, oh Lord, on your word this evening. We pray this in Jesus' holy name, amen and amen. Reading Genesis 29, starting with verse 31. 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. And 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. And 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 born him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi. 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 has also 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's 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 will call me blessed. So she called his name Asher. Now 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. 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 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. Afterward, 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. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. I mentioned the idea a little while ago of all redemption coming down to one family, one dysfunctional family. And I have to tell you that that dysfunction didn't come to an end when Jacob fled to Laban. And in fact, it doesn't come to an end really until the end of Genesis. Jacob's life seems to go from one family rivalry to another. First, it was him versus Esau, then it switched to Rachel versus Leah, and eventually he will see it become him versus his uncle Laban, and then eventually Joseph versus his other sons, his son versus the other ones. And yet, in the midst of all of this dysfunction and sin and rivalry, and we remember that a certain amount of sibling rivalry is to be understood. And indeed, it can produce good things when kids compete against one another for good grades, when they compete against one another athletically, and so on. It can cause them to strive for better and better things. But this is not good sibling rivalry. And it causes them, unfortunately, instead of pressing them towards the Lord, often it presses them towards sinful choices that they make. But in the midst of all of this dysfunction, this rivalry, these bad choices that they make, the Lord's purposes and promises are still being achieved. I want you to see that, that nothing breaks His plans, nothing changes His covenant promises, no matter what happens. And from in the midst of this family that sins and does all of these things would eventually come the 12 tribes and the nation of Israel, and beyond that, the promised seed. We remember that from these people eventually descend our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I love Derek Kidner's comment on all of this. He says, on the human plane, the story demonstrates the craving of human beings for love and recognition and the price of thwarting it. On the divine level, it shows once again the grace of God choosing difficult and unpromising material. God often uses the most unlikely people, the most unlikely circumstances, the smallest army, the smallest group. He started with Abraham, a man who was in his old age, who was planning for his funeral, essentially, and his inheritance. He started with him, and from Abraham, he began to build this mighty nation, this covenant people, from the most unlikely of materials, the Lord builds the greatest temple. Now, a third wheel in a relationship, the one who is not loved but hangs out with the two people who are in love and is constantly getting in the way, that isn't a fun situation to be in. Many people will have seen that kind of thing play out. in relationships in their own lives, in high school, in college, and other places. And unfortunately, that was Leah. She spent her entire life as the third wheel in the relationship between Rachel and Jacob. In verse 30, she is spoken of as unloved, according to the NKJV. This is a terrible Translation, but I understand why they made it. The word in Hebrew is actually sane. It is better translated hated. Jacob, I loved Esau, I hated, same word. In this case, Jacob never loved Leah. He hated Leah. Keep in mind that Jacob had never intended to marry Leah, and he knew that she had helped her father to deceive him. She had not spoken up on their wedding night and said, hey, Jacob, it's me, Leah. This shouldn't be happening, or anything like that. Instead, in the morning, behold, it was Leah in the tent with him, and he is disgusted. But the Lord loves the unloved. And while Jacob loved Rachel intensely, we note that it was Leah whom the Lord blessed with children. Rachel, for many years, clearly couldn't have children. If he wanted kids, therefore, and Jacob did want kids, Leah became the answer. So he had to go to Leah in order to have children. Leah's story is a sad story. I hope you note that she spends her entire life hoping her husband's heart will change. If I just do this one thing, if I just provide him with another son, eventually he will see, he will love me. His heart will turn towards me. And it never happens. He never gets to the point where he loves Leah. He never read. And at that point, Jacob said, what a jerk I've been to this woman for my entire life. Now I will love her. That doesn't happen. Instead, the names of her children indicate her desire, and in many cases, the desire that was thwarted. Reuben, behold a son. Simeon, the Lord has heard me. Levi, joined to now my heart, my husband's heart will be joined to me. Judah, praised, I praise God for his son, and so on. She goes through all of this, many, many years, but Jacob's heart doesn't change towards her. But Rachel, meanwhile, in the midst of all of this, is also desperately unhappy, and increasingly desperate about this situation. Years had gone by. Leah had given Jacob four sons, while Rachel had none at all. Rachel might have been the beloved of her husband, but every day, while Jacob looked at Rachel with favor and fondness, Rachel looked at Leah, suckling her sons, weaning them, she saw them toddling about, and she saw Leah's smirk at the same time. And she felt the rebuke, the sting of it. There is Leah nursing children, giving her that look again. And finally, her frustration boils over. She can bear it no longer. She cries out to her husband, if I don't have a kid, I'm gonna die! Don't you understand? This is an unbearable situation. I can't be a barren woman in the midst of the camp while my sister is constantly producing sons for you. Now Jacob, though, knows who's in charge of the universe and who brings forth children. He gets angry, too. Am I in the place of God? Look, hon, I'm not God. I can't make you have children. He's the one who's withheld from you the fruit of the womb. Now, the answer at that point should have been what should she have done? Pray. If God is the source of all blessings, Then go to him cry out to him day and night. Ask him for that which he has promised. He had said that that from Abraham ultimately would descend a multitude without number. Children would be part of their future. It was a it was an absolute promise given within the covenant. Therefore pray to the Lord for the things that he's promised. Ask for his mercy. But, and this is very important, at no point do we read that Rachel... went to God in earnest, devoted, loving prayer, crying out to him from her heart. The closest we get is in verse 22, that God heard Rachel, but the indication is probably that he heard her weeping and her sorrow and so on. In chapter 31, unfortunately, we find her stealing her father's idols to take with her. She might have been the beloved of Jacob, but, While she clearly knows that God existed. We don't see any knowledge or true knowledge of the Lord within her and certainly scripture presents us with no evidence that that Rachel loved Jehovah. It is actually from Leah, then, that the promised seed also comes. Note that. It's from Leah that Judah descends. Now we would expect, as we read through Genesis, one of the amazing things is if you ask the average Christian, I found this again and again, which one of Jacob's sons did Jesus descend from? You know the answer that they normally will give you? Because it just seems intuitive. Joseph, isn't he the, he's the blessed son, he's the one that Jacob loved, and we'll see that he does amazing things, and the Lord is clearly with him, and yet it's not from Jacob's son, Joseph. that Jesus descends. Who is it from? It's from Jacob's son, Judah. Jesus would be the lion of the tribe of Judah. God would make that decision that it was going to be from Judah and not from Joseph, not from any of Rachel's sons, that his son would come. Now, it isn't just a desire for children, though, unfortunately, we can see this in the story that this wrestling match comes about between Rachel and her sister Leah. Clearly, there's quite a bit of animus between the two of them, and that's natural. They're both competing for the affections of the same man. It should have been at this point, of course, that Rachel, instead of turning to God for help in the midst of her quandary, she should have turned to him in prayer, as you rightly said, but Rachel instead turns to sin. She turns and she uses her maid Bilhah to get sons. Jacob impregnates Bilhah And therefore, Rachel has two surrogate sons. They give birth on her knees. They're counted as her sons. because they're the sons of her slave women. This is not the way it was supposed to be. One of the things that you'll notice as we go through Genesis and indeed throughout the entire Bible, polygamy never brings happiness. God intended for the relationship between his people to be man and woman, two people brought together in one flesh relationship for life, two people. And that is because, of course, in that we see the perfect allegory for the relationship between God and the believer, between God and His church, as Ephesians 5 puts it. There we see Paul telling us that the believer, the church, is Christ's bride, and Christ is the groom. And so you only have two people. When you begin to add in extra people to that, the analogy breaks down and it becomes a mess. And the way that we're built, we're just naturally jealous. As God is jealous to have our affections, our whole heart, God doesn't want to share you with a bunch of useless idols. So too, he built us so that we desire to have the soul affections of our beloved, our husband, our wife. It should be the case that we're able to say to our wife, honey, you'll always be second in my heart. Number one being, of course, God, but there should be no others competing there. And in this situation, of course, we have two and three and four people competing, all for the affections of the same man. Now Leah, at this point after Rachel goes and she sinfully uses her maid to have children, Leah doesn't seem to be having any more children. She counters by giving her maid to Jacob so she could have more surrogate children herself. It's tit for tat now between the sisters. She has one, so I've got to have one, and so on. This is utterly wrong. And then we have this odd story, to put it mildly, of the Mandrakes, Reuben, Her oldest son is out in the fields as the harvest is going on and he finds mandrakes. It's interesting, the Hebrew word for the mandrake, and incidentally the technical term for the mandrake is mandragora, I found out the mandragora root, but in Hebrew it's duday. And it means, the closest translation is love apples. That's the way it comes out. And this was because the root was thought to increase sexual desire and to increase procreation. It was supposed to have a magical effect in that sense. Also, there were all these weird legends around the mandrake. The plant was supposed to make a screaming sound. when you pull it up, and it looks a little like ginger. They used to say that witches would use mandrakes, but they knew that they would die if they heard the scream of the plant, so they would fill their ears with wax, all this weird mythology and so on, superstition surrounding this plant. However, the plant itself does have certain properties. First, it's narcotic, but highly poisonous, so it's very difficult to use it. Most people do not use this, thankfully, as a drug, because too much and it kills you. It has been shown to arouse sexual desire to a certain amount, and it's also an anodyne, meaning it was used in the ancient world in order to dull pain. They would give it to people, for instance, who were going to have surgery. But as I said, it's very toxic and it would frequently kill people. It's in the deadly mandrake family. Those of you who have herbology and lore on board know that that's a family that will kill you. I believe also the tomato, though, strangely enough, is in the same family, but in any event. So Rachel is desperate for anything that might help her, and she hears about, that is, in her quest to have more kids and to have children herself, and so she thinks, aha, if I have these mandrakes, then I will have children. This is superstitious, but nonetheless, she believes it. Rachel had her husband's affections. Her husband wanted, and I'm going to be very frank with her, he wanted to sleep with her. He did not want to sleep with Leah, he did not want to spend time with her. So she has his affections, so what is she willing to do? She's actually willing to trade her time with her husband to her sister in order to get these mandrakes. And so that is exactly what she does. I'll give you Jacob, if you give me the mandrakes, then I'll use the mandrakes to get children eventually. And so we have then this awful circumstance where Leah meets Jacob coming in after a hard day's work in the fields. And she meets him and says, I've hired you tonight. You have to come to my tent. What kind of family is this? All right, I bought your services this evening. It's like he's a farm animal at this point in time. It's ridiculous. It's wrong. But that is what sin and superstition produce in our lives. In any event, he does sleep with her. She has another son, Issachar, and then after that she has another son, Zebulun, and then finally she has a daughter named Dinah. Dinah meaning vindication, although the meaning isn't given within the text. And we'll see Dinah involved in a very sad episode in a little while, I believe in chapter 34. But finally, Rachel has a son of her own. We don't read, and Rachel used the Mandrakes, and therefore she had a son. No, thankfully, we read that it was the Lord heard her and answered her. She has this son, Joseph. And again, we're going to see a failure to learn here. Now, Jacob had grown up in a family with lopsided affections. His son loved him. His son, sorry, I messed you up. You're all looking at me like his son loved him. His father, Isaac, loved him. Esau, he loved Esau. Jacob had suffered because of that, and he'd seen the bad effects of it, and yet, It doesn't stop him from having this awful lopsided affection for Rachel's son, Joseph, and then for her last son, Benjamin, who will die. And this is a cause of further conflict. Instead of bringing about healing within the family and so on, it ends up producing more and more conflict. And despite the fact that he saw what that lopsided affection, loving one child more than the other, so on, brought about, he practiced it himself. Brothers and sisters, if something bad happens in your life, and you can point to it and you can say that that was sinful, learn from that. and don't seek to reduplicate it in your own life. Unfortunately, though, this is something that requires a great deal of sanctified common sense. And sadly, know this, parents, it is very often the case that our bad habits are passed on to our children. Remember that. More often than not, they become like we are. I've seen that happen again and again. If you have a bad habit and you display it in front of your kids all the time, they take it in and reproduce it. And so, for instance, although we would never want, for instance, if we are alcoholics, for our children to be alcoholics, that tends to be the case. Why? Because they saw alcoholism modeled in front of them. That's sinful addiction. And they pick it up themselves. Remember that. We teach far more by the way we live than what we say. They watch us constantly. And they pattern themselves consciously and unconsciously upon us. You can see that, for instance, I don't know if you've ever watched this. You watch a way a boy walks. And often you'll see his father walking there. I, it was bizarre, a little while ago I saw one of my own sons, and in his own gate, I was like, oh no, that's the way I walk. Man, I messed him up. And then, you know, you realize that. They become who you are. Why? Because they watch you. So, therefore set before them an example of holiness, genuine holiness. Not hypocrisy, oh, the kid's watching, I better act holy. Praise the Lord! That isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about living consistently, a life of holiness before your children. Well, a few applications. First off, note this, every polygamous marriage in the Bible produces this kind of conflict. Polygamy is wrong, okay? We are living in a society where all of the God-given and biblical boundaries for marriage, what it was supposed to show us, are gradually being broken down. We have counterfeit marriages between people who never could have gotten married in Bible times or should have gotten married. And now we're beginning to follow the examples of polygamists in the past, forgetting that these things never produced anything good. Polygamy is on the horizon here in the United States. Laws are already allowing for that in several places. But it's not good, and it will not produce anything wholesome or good in the lives of the people who live in those polygamous marriages. So, understand, it is wrong, and that should teach us. If we deviate from God's standard, the way that he set things up, the way that he built creation, the way that he has organized society and man and so on, nothing good will come of it. If we, for instance, create a fantasy land where we can become whatever sex we want, we can marry whatever sex we want, we can engage into whatever relationship we want, nothing good will come of it. And we're watching that, we're seeing it, but we're trying desperately to avoid it. We're trying desperately to persuade ourselves that what we are watching isn't actually as bad as it is, and we're forcing that upon the next generation, and it's thoroughly evil. We have, I mean, it's a ridiculous situation. We have male swimmers wearing female swimsuits, competing against women, and beating the tails off of them. Of course they are, because God has built us differently. But we're all the same. No, we're not. God built us differently, just physically, for different things. We were fearfully and wonderfully made. And we're saying, no, I can erase that. If I think I'm a unicorn, I'm a unicorn. And then when people look at it, it's like the parable of the emperor's new clothes. You know, the child realizes the emperor is naked, and he cries out, the emperor's not wearing anything. And in the parable, the crowd goes, oh, if even the kid sees it, it must be true. Now, they'd all fall upon the kid and beat him senseless. How dare you? The emperor, if he says he's wearing clothes, he's wearing clothes, even though it's clearly not the case. So there was this pathetic case of a Penn State swimmer who, you know, the male swimmer's swimming as a female on her team, wins all the time, you know. She's trying desperately to say it's not fair, it's not right, it's making the sport awful for all of us. It's like those awful events in the show trials in Stalinist Russia where people were being put on trial for their lives and everybody had to say, yay, this is great, this is what, what an awful dystopian situation. What have we done? We've taken the truth, we've mangled it, and we've said good things will come of it when in fact bad things came of it. It's not just true in our age, it was true back here as well. They wanted polygamy to produce happiness, it didn't. It can't. because it's a sinful misordering of what God has created. Don't think that you will get happiness from doing things the wrong way. Leah desperately thought the day would happen when finally everything would switch. It didn't. Now, I've made this point before. I need to keep hitting it, though. There are so many people who have Leah's kind of misconception that at some point, from something bad, something good will happen, and they'll do things like they'll marry an unbeliever, saying, eventually, I'll change him. He'll become a believer, I'm sure, by, you know, just my dint of wanting it to happen. It doesn't. Do things the Lord's way, even if it goes against your natural tendency. That's the right way of doing things. And let me show you, when there is something in your life that is wrong and messed up and makes you sad and so on, sin is not the answer. The answer is always to seek the Lord's resources. So for instance, there is another example in the Bible given to us of a polygamous marriage that made the members of that marriage miserable. A woman by the name of Hannah was married to a man and he had two wives. Hannah was miserable because she didn't have children, and her rival did have children. We read in 1 Samuel 11 7 what she did about them, and note her continually doing this the right way. 1 Samuel 11 7, so it was year by year when she went up to the house of the Lord that she provoked her, that is her rival, therefore she wept and did not eat. Then Elkanah, her husband, said to her, Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons? I love you, Hannah. Is not enough? No, she wanted children. So Hannah arose after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the door post of the tabernacle of the Lord and she was in bitterness of soul and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish. Then she made a vow and said, oh Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant and remember me and not forget your maidservant, but will give you your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall come upon his head. I'm not saying it's the right thing to go about making deals with God or attempting to do so, but it is good to do what she did, to weep to pour out your heart and to seek consolation and help from the only person who can help you, really, in a situation like that, and that is the Lord God himself. Remember that I have seen again and again hopeless situations where the people involved prayed and it didn't seem like anything was going to change and it did. I have watched as people committed themselves to the means of grace and prayer and the Lord turned around marriages that seemed to be hopeless that were broken. I have seen as people prayed for their children who were on the wrong path and they they turned back. I have seen again and again the Lord take the situations where everybody said this will come to no good, no good end is going to happen here, and the Lord has produced something wonderful. Or even when it didn't seem to go the way it should have, the Lord's answer turned out to be the right thing in the long term. Go to the Lord. Trust in his providence. Trust in his sovereignty. Walk by faith in these situations. But whatever you do, do not think a sinful expedient will somehow produce happiness in your life. Instead, do the harder thing. Walk by faith. Learn to trust in God. Let's go before him. God our Father, we do thank you that you are the one who can produce the greatest good even out of the saddest and most evil situations. Of course, the greatest example of that was in sending your son to die on the cross. The greatest crime that man ever committed was taking the the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and putting him to death. His judicial murder was something abominable, beyond abominable. It was the worst thing that we've ever done. The only truly innocent man we took and sent to his death. And yet it was out of that that you brought about our salvation. Remind us that there is no darkness so deep that you cannot turn it to good. Oh Lord, help us then to trust in you and to trust in your means and not to go about sinful expedience to try to make up things. Lord, remind us that happiness doesn't come from disobeying you. As a matter of fact, it generally and always usually produces unhappiness and messed up families. Oh Lord, therefore, help us to stand fast, to do things according to your ordering.