LOVE IS NOT ALL YOU NEED! GENESIS 29 In his treatment of this topic, Timothy Keller quotes from the musical Company in a section labeled Being Alive. In the musical a man falls in love with a woman and sings that she will need me too much know me too well pull me up short, and put me through hell. He laments that as painful as the process is, it is the only way he can feel alive. In the same musical in the section labeled, Bewitched a woman admits that the man she s fallen for is a fool, will let her down, but, she says, I m wild again, beguiled again, a simpering, whimpering child again. Without a romantic relationship of some kind, even the wrong kind, their lives feel meaningless. JACOB: MAN ON THE LAM I think this gives some understanding to a scene in today s text. Jacob is guilty, lonely, poor and far from home. Jacob s life was empty. He has lost his father s respect and his mother s love. He older brother has vowed to kill him and he latches on to Rachel as the solution to all his problems! He rashly offers 4 times the going bride price and 7 years later he hasn t matured. The Hebrew text is unusually raw when he goes to Laban to claim his bride and is not nearly as romantic sounding as the English which begins with the sweet phrase, (VS.20) So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days because of his love for her. Then Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife. My time is completed and I want to have sex with her. The author is showing us a man overcome with emotional and sexual longing for a woman. Jacob would fit right in to our world. Listen to the music of our day: All you need is love. I can t get no satisfaction. You re nobody till somebody loves you. Millions are looking for that one true soul mate to satisfy all the longings of their hearts for meaning and purpose and significance. If we can just find that one person that we were meant for and who was meant for us everything wrong with
us will be healed. No human relationship can bear this weight. Those expectations on a relationship make the love object a god. No lover, no human being, is qualified to be a god, and the inevitable result is disillusionment. If you know how the story unfolds, you know that Laban and Jacob deserved each other. Jacob had a long history as a conniving cheat, stealing his brother s birthright and blessing, but he meets his match in Laban! Laban switches brides and gives Jacob Leah, the unattractive older daughter instead of Rachel and extracts another seven years from Jacob. The Hebrew is very expressive again: vs. 25 In the morning, behold! Leah! Many have noted that this was not the first time a person went to bed with someone only to discover in the morning light or after the honeymoon is over, I thought I was going to bed with Rachel, but I woke up with Leah. Laban had been very cagy: He never spelled out the deal with Jacob, (vs.19) and basically says, A man like you should know better. The ones who really get cheated here are the two (make that four) women (and eventually 13 children) involved. A scene unfolds that fits the no commitment, I m in this for my pleasure, and sex is no big deal culture of our day. Jacob juggles hook ups with four women. In the 1940 s, C.S. Lewis heard from many of his peers in the British academy that sex was nothing but an appetite, like that for food. Once we recognize this, they said, and begin to have sex any time we want it, people will cease being driven mad by desire for love and sex. Lewis doubted this and proposed a thought experiment. Suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon as the crowd goes wild. Would you not think in that country that
something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? One critic said that if he found a country in which such strip-tease acts with food were popular, he would conclude that people of that country must be starving! Lewis goes on to argue, we are not starving for sex; there is more sex and sexual content available than ever before, yet pornography is a billion dollar industry. Sex and love are not just an appetite like food. Lewis argued that the very fact that we have appetites that cannot be completely satisfied in this life are evidence that heaven exists. LEAH, THE WOMAN NOBODY WANTED Gen.29:31-35 Leah fixed her heart on Jacob, just as Jacob had fixed his heart on Rachel. Leah is blessed with children and expresses her longing for Jacob with each subsequent son. Reuben see; a son and says, surely my husband will love me (see me) now. Simeon one who hears. Now my husband will really listen to me. Levi attached Perhaps a real attachment will form between me and my husband. Each birth pushed her deeper into a hell of loneliness and longing. With son number four, something happens. She names him Judah Praise and says, This time I will praise the Lord. She doesn t call God the usual Elohim (the Almighty) she uses the word Yahweh. Yahweh was the name of God that was revealed to Abraham. The only way she could have known this name is if Jacob had told her about the promise that was given to his grandfather, and repeated to him. Even though Leah was struggling and confused, she reached out to a personal God of grace. This time there is no mention of her husband and children; this declaration fixes her heart on the Lord At last Leah has discovered real love. God has given her assurance that he loves her with an everlasting love. Judah was the son through whom the messiah would someday come. God came to the woman that nobody wanted and made her the ancestral mother of Jesus. Salvation came into the world, not through the beautiful Rachel, but through the unwanted one, the unloved one.
When we discover the genuine love of God, the longings of our heart are finally satisfied and we are freed from idolatry to love and be loved. RACHEL, THE WOMAN JACOB WANTED Rachel may never have found the true love of God. When Jacob gathered his family and flocks to return home, she and Leah describe their relationship with their father: (Gen.31:15) Does he not regard us as foreigners? Not only has he sold us, but he has used up what was paid for us. Rachel stole her Father Laban s household idols and hid them in her baggage. She was separating from her father, but not his gods. If you marry someone expecting them to be and do what only God can do, you will be disappointed. As we learn to love God deeply, His love frees us to love our spouse in a way that is healthy and delightful. JESUS: THE MAN NOBODY WANTED When God came to earth in Jesus Christ, he was truly the son of Leah. He became the man nobody wanted. He was born in a manger. He had no beauty so that we would desire Him. (Isaiah 53:2) He came to His own and His own received Him not. (John1:11) At the end everyone abandoned Him. Why? He took upon Himself our sins and died in our place. If we are deeply moved by the sight of his love for us, it detaches our hearts from other would-be saviors We stop trying to make others into saviors, because we have a Savior. (Keller) Keller tells the story of Sally. Sally had the misfortune of being born beautiful and she knew from childhood that she could use her beauty to manipulate others. She went from one superficial relationship to another and told Keller that she only felt alive when she was on the arm of a man, even when the relationship became abusive. One day Sally told me she got her life back. She went to a counselor who rightly pointed out that she had been looking to men for her identity, for her salvation. Instead, the counselor proposed, she should get a career and become financially independent as a way of building her self-esteem. I was being advised to give up a common female idolatry and take on a common male idolatry, she said. But I
didn t want to have my self-worth dependent on career success any more than on men. I wanted to be free. How did she do it? She came across Colossians 3, where Paul writes: Your life is hidden with Christ in God and when Christ who is your life appears, you will appear with him in glory. (Col.3:1-4) She adopted this verse and when she would meet a man she would say to herself, You may turn out to be a great guy, and maybe even my husband, but you cannot be my life. Only Christ is my life. When she began to do this, like Leah, she got her life back. THE REST OF THE STORY Grace Brackets The Stairway to heaven dream: Gen.28:12-15 The wrestling match: Jacob returns home fears his brother Gen.32:22-32 I believe that Jacob met Christ who is our life. The limp was a gift reminding him that after all his struggles he had found the one true God and the one true relationship that he longed for.intimacy with God. There was a lot of pain and damage inside those grace brackets! Jacob at last found the answer to the question we all must ask in life: Who can I turn to who is so beautiful that he will enable me to escape all counterfeit gods? Jesus is the only answer to this question! How has He reached out to you? How are you responding? What will it take? I Cor.10:11-17