God's holy and inspired word, give you attention again to it. When it was told Laban on the third day that Jacob had fled, he took his kinsmen with him and pursued him for seven days and followed close after him into the hill country of Gilead. But God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream by night and said to him, be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad. And Laban overtook Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the hill country, and Laban with his kinsmen pitched tents in the hill country of Gilead. And Laban said to Jacob, What have you done, that you have tricked me, and driven away my daughters like captives of the sword? Why did you flee secretly, and trick me, and did not tell me, so that I might have sent you away with mirth and songs, with tambourine and lyre? And why did you not permit me to kiss my sons and my daughters farewell? Now you have done foolishly. It is in my power to do you harm. But the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad. And now you have gone away because you long greatly for your father's house. But why did you steal my gods? Jacob answered and said to Laban, Because I was afraid, for I thought that you would take your daughters from me by force. Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not live. In the presence of our kinsmen, point out what I have that is yours and take it. Now Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them. So Laban went into Jacob's tent, and into Leah's tent, and into the tent of the two female servants. But he did not find them. And he went out of Leah's tent and entered Rachel's. Now, Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel's saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about the tent, but did not find them. And she said to her father, let my lord not be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me. So he searched, but did not find the household gods. Then Jacob became angry and berated Laban. Jacob said to Laban, What is my offense? What is my sin that you have hotly pursued me? For you have felt through all my goods. What have you found of all your household goods? Set it here before my kinsmen and your kinsmen, that they may decide between us two. These 20 years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks. What was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it myself. From my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was, by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes. These 20 years I have been in your house. I have served you 14 years for your two daughters and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages 10 times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night. Then Laban answered and said to Jacob, the daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine. But what can I do this day for these my daughters or for their children whom they have born? Come now, let us make a covenant, you and I, and let it be a witness between you and me. So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. And Jacob said to his kinsmen, gather stones. And they took stones and made a heap. And they ate there by the heap. Laban called it Jegar sahaduthah. But Jacob called it Galid. Laban said, this heap is a witness between you and me today. Therefore, he named it Galid and Mizpah, for he said, The Lord watched between you and me when we were out of one another's sight. If you oppress my daughters or take wives besides my daughters, although no one is with us, see, God is witness between you and me. Then Laban said to Jacob, See this heap and the pillar which I have set between you and me? This heap is a witness and the pillar is a witness that I will not pass over this heap to you and you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me to do harm. The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor and the God of their father judged between us. So Jacob swore by the fear of his father Isaac and Jacob offered a sacrifice in the hill country and called his kinsmen to eat bread. They ate bread and spent the night in the hill country. Early in the morning, Laban arose and kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. And then Laban departed and returned home. Amen. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, having read your word, we pray now for your help, that by your spirit, the very spirit that inspired these words, you would work in us. Lord, shine your revelation, Lord, into our hearts and minds, that we would know and see and love our savior Jesus Christ, the one in whose name we pray, amen. You may be seated. One of the things that Psalm 115, the psalm we've been looking at in our evening service, one of the things it sets before us and proclaims to us is that God is sovereign, that he has control over all things. He sees the end from the beginning, he raises up, he puts down, intimately, active, in all his people's ways. And when you think of God's sovereignty, we tend to think of it just as power. Like, as someone who is sovereign, it's connected, and rightfully so, with strength, with mind. Our God is in the heavens, he does all that he pleases. But there's another sense in which sovereignty is connected with activity. that God is in the heavens, he does all that he pleases. He doesn't sit idly by, he acts, and he acts for his glory, and ultimately for his people's good. All throughout scripture, and indeed all throughout history itself, there is one primary actor on the stage of creation, and it's the Lord. The Lord is active, even when it seems he's not. That's true of your own lives, when it seems like the Lord has abandoned you, and it seems like he isn't there, he isn't working, he isn't hearing your prayers, he isn't changing you, he isn't sanctifying you, he isn't responding, he isn't helping you. Those seasons, dark as they might be, are seasons in which we feel like God isn't acting. Nevertheless, he always is. Even Scripture, in passages of Scripture, even whole books of Scripture, like the book of Esther, that fail to mention the name of God and fail to describe His activity, still have Him wonderfully, perfectly, and zealously acting in the background for His glory and His people's good. If one thing we learn from this chapter, and this is a big chapter, there's many verses, if there's one thing we learn from it, it is that God is active and has been active all along the way to secure the good of his people represented here or found here in Jacob. And ultimately, this chapter is given to remind us of the Lord who is active in and through us for his own glory and for our good. We'll go through this in a number of ways. The first thing we'll do is we'll try to summarize briefly just the contours of this chapter and what's unfolding before us, and then make a few points of application, which you have in your bulletin, as our sermon outlined, just the activity of God, who speaks, who, the second point is acts, but protects, is a better word perhaps I should have used there. Protects, guards, keeps. A God who saves as well. A God who is, well, active in all that he does, even as he gives to his people. their daily bread. So we have a lot to learn here. Let's consider the contours of this passage. As it opens, remember Jacob is in Paddan Aram, he's in Haran, he's with Laban. They have struck a deal that of all of Laban's flocks, anything that is born that is striped or spotted will become Jacob's. And this pact, this promise that they've struck, occurred at the end of the 14 years that Jacob served for his two wives, and he himself was tricked and was given both Leah and Rachel to be wives, but he had to work for Laban for 14 years. Well, at the end of those 14 years, he struck a deal with Laban that he would see his flock, guard and keep and shepherd them for a number of seasons to come, and any that were born that were spotted or striped would become Jacobs, and it would be a way that he could then gain wealth and provide for his own family. Well, God blessed his shepherding, and over the next six years, we learn here that Jacob, look back at verse 43 of the last chapter, increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, camels and donkeys. In other words, God gave him blessing the same way he gave Abraham blessing. He increased him abundantly. That then leads to the tension that begins to develop. We read in the first couple of chapters or verses of chapter 31 that there are three reasons that drive Jacob to the point of fleeing. that God used to reveal to him that this is the time to go. After the six additional years, 20 whole years amongst his uncle's house, he must now return. The first reason is the gossip and talk amongst Laban's sons. These unnamed brothers of Rachel and Leah, who are seeing Jacob's abundance and are beginning to envy him and to gossip about him. Look at what he's done. He's taking away all that belongs to our father, which the subtext, by the way, that that is, he's taking away all that should be ours. as his sons. Now, they know good and well the character of Laban, their father. They know that Laban, even in the original arrangement of this plan that Jacob would get the striped and spotted animals, that Laban separated all them already from the flocks and put them in the possession of these very men, Laban's sons. They know the trickery of their father, and perhaps that inflames their envy even all the more. The second reason is that Laban himself begins to become even more suspicious and even more cantankerous, and Laban did not regard Jacob with favor as before. There was a tension in their conversations, perhaps there was an underlying, unresolved, simmering bitterness, and Jacob took note. But the ultimate reason why Jacob left and knew that this is now the time as that God speaks, And God speaks and tells him, we read in verse three, the Lord said to him, return, return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you. This is calling our attention back to Bethel when Jacob was leaving the land and he saw in a vision God himself, heard his words as he saw a staircase and angels going up and down, this wild vision, and in it God promised him that he will not only be with him as he's now leaving the land, But he will be with him to safely bring him home. And now God is giving him the green light, finally saying, go. So Jacob gathers Rachel and Leah, his wives. gathers them together to convince them that the time is ripe for them to leave. And in the speech he makes before them, we have this in verses four and following, he shows a robust maturity that he lacked throughout much of his life up to this point. And we see his maturity in his God-centeredness. This will be one of the points we make later on in application. In his description of what Laban has done, he always dovetails that with what God has done. So he tells his wives, your father does not guard me with favor as before, but God, my father, the God of my father has been with me. He says, you know that I've served your dad for all these years and he's cheated me like all of these times, 10 times he's changed my wages, but God didn't permit him to harm me. You know that there was this plan, striped and spotted and motted animals become mine. And God has, in that, taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me. In other words, he says, this has happened to me from the hands of your father. This is how he's treated me poorly, and yet God has been with me all along. You see, he has a God-centered view of really the past, which, again, is apart from a whole lot of revelation. This is him just resting in God, who is active in his life, even when it seems like he isn't. Well, they depart. They leave. Actually, the word for leaving here is more It's one in which here Jacob flees. He's running away from like an attacking animal, kind of the same way he fled from Esau when he left the promised land. Jacob arose and set his sons and his wives on camels. He drove away all his livestock and all the property he had acquired. He left. He did so at a particularly important time for a shepherd, the time of the sheep shearing. when Laban would be very busy, like sun up to sun down, with back-breaking hard labor, shearing his sheep. He wouldn't have time to realize even that Jacob is gone. And so the text tells us here in verse 20 that by this timing and by the immediate get up and go, sort of a fleeing of Jacob's departure, that Jacob tricked Laban the Aramean. Literally, he stole his heart. left at a time in which Laban is caught unaware by this. We also read, a bit of a parenthetically, that as Laban had gone to shear his sheep, Rachel stole her father's household gods. Hold that in your mind for a second. Laban becomes aware of the departure of Jacob, and he himself takes his kinsmen. He gathers all those who aren't encumbered with shearing sheep, and he pursues Jacob for seven days. Like, this is an intense thing. They come all the way to the hill country of Gilead. This is like 300 miles away from Paddan-iram. This is quite the pursuit. And on the eve of Laban's catching up to Jacob, God appears to him and says, Do not say anything to Jacob, either good or bad. It's a way of saying do not judge the situation. You can't overtake Jacob. Your trickery is done, actually. He's out of your hands. So what does Laban do? He overtakes Jacob, finally, and he launches into a passionate speech one in which he is resigned to the Lord, the Lord who had appeared to him in a dream. He's not demanding any of this back. This rather is a speech that is textbook, a textbook speech of an angered, stirred up, manipulative man who has been tricked and blindsided. And we just notice what he says in his words here in verse 26. First of all, what have you done? Why have you tricked me? You've taken away my daughters like captives with a sword. Well, that's not actually true. Rachel and Leah decided to go. They weren't driven out sort of with the heavy hand of Jacob. No, they went. They recognized their father's duplicity in the past 20 years. Of course they did. Why did you flee secretly and trick me, Laban says, and not tell me? I would have sent you away with mirth and songs, tambourine and lyre. Now that is, well, a lie. Would Laban really have done that? This is clear, like, manipulative tactics. Man, if you would just have gone and just told me, man, I would have thrown a big party for you. Completely not the case. Be it as it may, he says, you've acted a fool. You didn't even let me kiss my sons, meaning his grandsons, or his daughters farewell, and I could really, really, really hurt you, he says in verse 29, but God spoke to me and said, do not. And now you've gone away because you long greatly for your father's house. And then with almost humor, sealing his argument, the height of his passion, but why did you steal my gods? Now, brief aside, household gods were a common thing in that day and time. They were probably little statues you would keep on your hearth or mantle, either of local deities or, maybe more likely, of ancestors. that you would pray to, you would seek wisdom and guidance from. They would have either been carved from wood or maybe even been a little more valuable, at least earthly speaking, made from gold or silver or something like that, some precious metal. They would have been significant to a family for they would be passed down from generation to generation. to be revered, to be honored. They were like trinkets that one prayed to, almost, you can imagine, like superstitious little rabbit feet, although in the image of your ancestors that you wanna seek their wisdom from. And so Laban really is concerned that he has these gods, yet Rachel has stolen them unbeknownst to Jacob. And so Jacob himself answers back to Laban and says, well, I was afraid. I thought you would take your daughters from me by force. And that's why he fled. And he says in verse 32, well, about your gods, I don't know what you're talking about. Anyone who has them in their possession shall surely die. Almost goes over the top in a kind of Jephthah-like way here. And he doesn't know Rachel has his Laban's gods. It serves to give a lot of tension to this passage as then Laban starts frantically to search about for these gods and he goes into Jacob's tent. He doesn't find them. He turns over everything. He goes into Leah's tent and he doesn't find them. Turning over everything and then eventually the text kind of slows us down and says he gets to Rachel. And we read that Rachel had put these gods in her saddle as she sat on the camel. And Laban went frantically searching all through her tent. And lo and behold, no gods were found. And she then says to her father, please excuse me. The way of women is upon me. It's that time of the month. I will not get up from this camel. Yet she was sitting on these household gods. It's almost comical, this situation here. I think intentionally. Here you have almost the heights of Isaiah 44 and the parable of the man cutting a log in half and worshiping half of it while making dinner with the other. It shows us, as we'll make clear in a bit, the ineptitude of idolatry as a whole, the impotence of these gods that are reduced to being sat on and to uncleanness and to really just mockery and foolishness. Well, the gods aren't found. Jacob becomes angry, righteously so, and he berates Laban, and he launches into his own defense of his own good name. He says, what have I done wrong? How have I harmed you, Laban? All these years I worked for you, and when I worked for you, I did so by the sweat of my brow. I went above and beyond what any good servant should do. And he gets a few examples here. He says that I've not stolen from your flocks. I've not kept any of the rams for myself. None of your animals have miscarried. Out of all the thousands of livestock that have been born, that is significant. Even when various wild beasts, wolves or bears, attacked the flock and tore apart some of the sheep or the goats or the lambs, I paid for it myself. I footed the bill, and that was in the laws of the time, not required by any means whatsoever. The shepherd could show to the owner of the sheep, the animal and they will be absolved of having to provide any restitution for it. Not Jacob. He paid for it out of pocket. And there I was, a day, I was out in the fields in the heat. At night, I was there in the cold. I even went, afore went sleep for you to watch your flocks. And for 20 years, I've been in your house. I served you 14 years for your two daughters, subtext there is, you tricked me. You were not kind to me and the whole wedding thing. And you made me work for you for 14 years as a slave pretty much. And then for six more years for your flock and you've changed my wages in those six years, 10 whole times, tried to renegotiate this deal. You swindled me at the beginning. What have I done wrong to you? If God had not been on my side, see his God-centeredness there again, then surely you would have sent me away empty-handed or, he doesn't voice this here, but destroyed me. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands. He is the one who rebuked you last night. Laban is brought to the end of himself. humbled, reluctantly having to recognize the superiority or at least the equality of Jacob. No longer is this a nephew slave. This is one like him, perhaps even better. And he expresses that by a covenant. A covenant is at least this type of covenant here is made between at least equals But more often than not, a superior and an inferior, in the sense that Jacob is more wealthy, more honorable, has a higher status than Laban. Regardless, there's a covenant that they make. They set up stones to testify to this, which serve as a bit of a boundary marker as well. I will not cross this line if you do not cross this line to do harm. They put a line in the sand, in a way. and they make a promise to each other in the presence of God himself that they will establish and foster and keep peace between them. And then Rachel gets up, or Laban gets up in the morning, kisses Rachel, Leah, and the 11 grandchildren, or 12, counting Leah's daughter, and then he departs and returns home. It's a wild chapter. It's a full chapter. It's a chapter in which we learn much. We learn much about, especially, God. I mean, this is the Bible. It's meant to give us revelation about who God is, even in long narratives filled with impassioned pleas such as this. What do we learn here? A few things, you have these in your bulletin. First, an overarching principle stands out here, is that God speaks. We can't ever lessen that wild notion that the maker of the ends of the earth, the God of heaven and earth, the one who speaks the galaxies and lands and atoms into existence, is the one who, well, reveals himself to his people. He speaks. Here we have the whole chapter opening with the word from God to Jacob in a dream we infer. saying, return to the land of your fathers and the kindred and I will be with you. And he has spoken or speaks to him again. And another dream concerning the flocks mating and bearing spotted and striped and motted sheep and goats that would belong to Jacob. God speaks to Laban in judgment and warning upon him. God is not silent. He is there. He speaks in a number of ways. He speaks to command his servant here. Go home, he says. It's a command. Return to your land, the land that he's promised to give him. And then he joins that command, that spoken word, to a promise of his presence and his preservation and his care, which is the biblical way, by the way. When you have in the scriptures a command, a rule to follow, it's joined with a promise from God. either explicitly or implicitly within the wider context. I mean, right here. Go home, I will be with you. Obey me, but I promise to keep you safe. This is the way God's spoken word works. It's the way commands work. The commands come to a people, and yet they're connected and joined with promises. The Lord gives his law, and he gives the promise of his gospel. We see that even in our service, how we begin with a command, and the reading of his law, and that helps us see our sin, and then the promise of his gospel, that if we've confessed our sins, he is for us, he has brought us salvation, he will continue to be with us. And not even just outside of that use of the law, the law that commands that God gives to direct our steps, like he does for Jacob here. It's referred to as a third use of the law. It is to be rule of life, that which we follow in order to please God and to show our gratitude and to love our neighbor and to just seize hold of what is true, blessed, and good life. It's still connected with a promise, a promise of God's help and provision Reward, even? Look, go and, I'm directing you, Jacob. Return, and here's the promise. I will be with you. God speaks. He speaks to direct his people, to instruct them. He speaks to reveal his promises to them, like this is not to be forgotten, that God is a speaking God, particularly as we turn to the New Testament and Jesus Christ, who we learn around, Usually at Christmas time when we give our attention to the narratives around the birth of Christ, John 1, which is almost like a hymn in a way, so flowing and poetic, describing the work of the Word of God, who took on flesh, like the Word of God took on flesh and dwelt amongst us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. that Moses brought you the law. Here, Jesus comes and brings grace to those who have broken that law, and he comes as the truth and the way to God. Actually, no one has ever truly seen the essence of God, John says, essentially. But this God, the word made flesh, he's come to show you what a father is like. God speaks, and he speaks extremely clearly and ultimately and fully in his son. The second point we see here and we learn from this chapter is that God acts to protect or to guard or to keep and defend his people. Now this is spread all through Jacob's past. Everything that Jacob experienced in Laban, which we've noted earlier, it's like a school in which Jacob himself is humbled under the hand of his father's discipline. Yet God is not only disciplining, but protecting and guarding his son Jacob here from Laban's treacherous ways. He did that in the past, now he's doing it right here in the present as well. Jacob noted that, I worked, he changed my wages, but God kept him from harming me. This constant Laban did this, but God did this. And then in the present here, Jacob is fleeing, but God shows up and prevents Laban from doing harm to Jacob. God is active to protect his people. He is our keeper and the shade at our right hand. The sun shall not harm us by day, nor the moon by night. There's no better refuge to run to. for divine protection and care and defense in the Lord's name. Even when seasons of life are such that frustrations and disappointment outweigh our joy, our happiness, especially in those times, perhaps, we learn or we run to God as the one who protects and cares for us. Even when it feels like he's not active, He is. He was for Jacob. He will be for you. Therefore, our response is to center our entire life on the Lord, to live a God-centered life. This is the only way to persevere and to possess God's promises. Let us run the race that is set before us, throwing aside what holds us down in the sin that clings so closely, and let us pursue Christ the author and perfecter of our faith, who himself has run a race for us, actually the same thing, and is now with us all through it. God protects. The third point we learn from this chapter is that God gives, the increase. He is the one who brings abundance to Laban. here in this chapter. You might put it in the realm of common grace that God blesses Laban through the work of Jacob. Even as God blesses everything that Jacob's hand touches, he's got that Abrahamic sort of blessing that later we'll see in Joseph especially. Like everything he does, it can't help but flourish. God has his ends for that. It's not a promise for us that in every endeavor of our life, there will be increase the same way Jacob's Endeavors here to shepherd the flock of Laban led to increase. It's not a promise of material wealth and prosperity for God's people spread throughout all time. This is what God did for Jacob. But nevertheless, it does teach us the truth that whatever we have in abundance, we're in just our daily bread. It's a gift from God. He gives the increase. He gave children. to Rachel, to Leah, to Jacob. He gives flocks to them to provide them with wealth that serves almost like a currency. It's like money that they're able to spend to care for their family and bless others. He provides their daily bread. God gives the increase. And we can confess that all day long, but I fear that for many of us, our hearts are more Laban-like than we realize. For Laban is one who's set before us as one who does not see that God gives the increase, or at least who uses God's increase that he provides through Jacob, even as he recognizes the Lord has blessed you. He says that in previous chapters. But yet Laban is thirsty and zealous, well, to put it simply, for money, for wealth. He is the epitome of someone who lives for the love of money. That's why his character is so rotten. He's motivated by his greed. He, in the words of his own daughters, would sell them. For what? Seven years of work in the field? He's avaricious and greedy. And we see in him and his character that truly, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. There's much we can be warned about Laban's character here. And one way is we can be warned about people like him. He would share his manipulative, greedy tactics that just seek to use people, to manipulate their emotions, to shame them. I mean, what is his impassioned speech meant to accomplish here? He can't get his daughters back. He can't get his grandchildren back. He's not gonna bring Jacob back. He is simply speaking the words he is speaking here out of frustration and anger meant to shame them. If you would've just stayed a little bit longer, I would've thrown you a party. how many people today essentially say the very same things to those whom they have used and abused, manipulated, and sought to, well, manipulate for their own good as they see it, for their own glory. We're taught to avoid those like him, but also to avoid becoming like him ourselves, to flee the idolatry of riches, These household gods, again, it's kind of an odd part of this chapter, but it's significant. These household gods would have been consulted for wisdom, yes, as I said. They would also have been seen as a source of stability. Like, this is how you know that you will have enough either for the day or have an abundance. Like, these are your superstitious trinkets whereby you can know that you'll be wealthy and rich. And maybe that's why Laban is so frantically searching for them, because he wants them. Jacob's gone now. What else is he going to trust in to keep his life stable? On the flip side, maybe that's why Rachel stole them. She thought, we're going to a foreign land, at least to her. We're leaving everything she's ever known. We're not told why she did what she did. The gods themselves are judged to be nothing, to be less than valuable, to be impotent, to be foolish. I mean, they have no power whatsoever, and yet they seem to command the love of Laban and in some ways Rachel here. In other words, idolatry is always foolish. We see it in Laban here, especially the idolatry of riches as a means of stability. Let us not have a Laban-like life. Well, the last point of application we can learn from this is simple. It's that God saves. The Lord is salvation. As opposed to these idols who are worthless. That's the tension in this passage here that's ultimate. God versus these idols. The Lord who actually is active, who actually is devoted to the protection and provision of his people, who actually speaks, who actually reveals, and these idols who are stuffed in a bag and sat upon and therefore lost. The Lord is the one who will save. And we see that in a number of ways in this passage, most especially in the, I mentioned earlier, the contours of this passage. tune in which this song, you could say, is sung. It's a theme that is later repeated. It comes back, the language of chapter 31. It comes back in the book of Exodus, as God's people are held in bondage, as the Lord hears their affliction, as the Lord says to his people through his servant Moses, essentially, return to the land of your fathers. And I will be with you as God sends out his people, as he judges the one who held them captive, Pharaoh and Egypt, as he's with them to protect them, as even when Pharaoh's armies catch up to Israel, the Red Sea, they are the ones who are judged rather than Israel. as God is with his people to provide salvation and redemption. An exodus that itself is a theme that later returns with greater glory, with greater significance, with greater redemption for more than just a people held in bondage in a small part of the ancient Near East, but for all people who are held in bondage to sin and Satan and death. in Christ himself who comes to bring a new exodus and does so by entering into our condition, by taking to himself our nature, by coming and suffering the bondage himself in a way, being counted as sin on our behalf. that we will be counted as the righteousness of God, Christ who comes and is the one through whom God speaks and ultimately protects and saves and gives us the increase in spiritual abundance and the life that is abundant and eternal life, like Jesus who does all for us in a glorious exodus, the exodus of the Israelites and Jacob here from Paddan Aram, foreshadows and prepares us to remember and to trust in. We have in this chapter a God who is active, the very same God who was active when he came, took on flesh, died for our sins, and rose again for our justification. The God who is even now continually active in all of your days, in those seasons of disappointment and frustration when Your joy is barely there, if at all. God who is active when you suffer at the hands of a manipulative person or an employer like Laban. God who is active to protect and provide for you even if you can't feel it and sense it now. God who is active ultimately in Christ, who came and who will come again to judge the living and the dead, and to bring his people fully, completely, and eternally into his perfect kingdom of righteousness, and joy, and peace, and rest. This is a God we learn of from Genesis 31. Let's pray.