[0:00] The Lord's blessing will turn to the scripture we read, Genesis chapter 29.
[0:10] And at verse 1, Genesis 29 at verse 1, Then Jacob went on his journey and came into the land of the people of the east.
[0:38] And so on, I want to consider with you Jacob and Laban as they're brought before us in the chapter we read. Now after Jacob received the vision at Bethel of the stairway ascending to heaven, he then makes his way and he picks up his journey again on the way to Haran, to his mother's brother's house, the man called Laban.
[1:10] And he begins his journey the second time in a more refreshed frame of mind. We're told that Jacob went on his journey and the words literally mean that he lifted up his feet, which indicates that he did so with joy and with gladness because the Lord had come to him with power in Bethel.
[1:27] And God had showed him great favor in Bethel by showing him the stairway to heaven. And so he's a spiritually strengthened man as he makes his way towards Haran, the city where Laban himself is living.
[1:43] And God fulfills the promise that he gave to him at Bethel by guiding him across the Jordan and by eventually guiding him to Paddan Aram into the city of Haran.
[1:54] After all, God had said to him, I am with thee and I will keep thee in all places whither thou goest. And Jacob found that to be true. He makes his way safely at this point to Haran.
[2:08] And God has prepared a home for him with Laban. Now when Rebecca told him to leave the home, she thought he might be away for a few days. But in God's plan and providence, he was over 20 years in the service of Laban in Paddan Aram.
[2:25] God's ways are not our ways. I'm sure that Rebecca thought things would work out exactly the way she planned it herself, but they did not. God's purposes are inscrutable.
[2:37] His ways are beyond our thinking. And his providence for us can hardly be imagined by us ourselves. And that is how it worked out in the life of Jacob, as it works out in the life of all the Lord's people.
[2:52] And if Jacob himself thought that everything would go well and it would go easily in Paddan Aram, then he was deceived himself because it was far from it. In fact, this 20 year plus period in Haran was the time of his own humiliation, a time of deep testing and a time of great trial.
[3:14] Now, when he looks back on it many years afterwards, he says that he had nothing but drought by day and frost by night and sleep departed from my eyes.
[3:24] He was used and he was abused by Laban, who made him nothing really more than a servant. And all day and all night he was out tending the flocks. And he was doing so for over 20 years.
[3:37] And that was the period of Jacob's humiliation. Now, there are two reasons for this. And both reasons tie together and are very closely related. The first reason we could call a typical reason.
[3:51] Or it is a type or it functions like a type in this way. You'll notice that right from the beginning, the Bible develops what you could call a theme of the suffering seed.
[4:03] Right from the moment the messianic seed is promised, you'll discover that the seed is going to be one who suffers and who must, through tribulation and suffering, make his way into the kingdom of heaven.
[4:19] The one who is to be the Messiah, the captain of our salvation, will not, as it were, work out that salvation easily for us. It won't be a simple matter of coming to lead us and to guide us into the heavenly home.
[4:31] He must somehow descend himself and he must have a deep humiliation before he is exalted himself. And that must be the path of all his people also.
[4:43] And so you find this strange pattern throughout the word of God. God's people are greatly blessed with precious promises and then they descend into a valley of humiliation before they ascend into exaltation in heaven.
[5:01] Now in that valley, God has prepared a table for them and he has prepared some summits and he has prepared green pastures. But still, overall, it is a valley of humiliation through which the Christian passes in this world until he ascends out of it and makes his way into glory.
[5:19] For example, Jacob himself. Here he is, given a great vision at Bethel. But is he to immediately inherit the promised land?
[5:29] No, he isn't. He has just received the promise. He has received the blessing. But now he must descend into Paddan Aram. There is the suffering seed. Joseph is the same.
[5:41] As a young man, he is given precious dreams of his own exaltation and of God's blessing of him. Does that immediately follow? No, it doesn't. He must be sold.
[5:53] He must be sold as a slave. He must go to prison in Egypt. He must be misunderstood. He must be reviled. He must be persecuted before he himself is raised and exalted.
[6:04] Moses is called by the Holy Spirit to deliver Israel from bondage. And he goes out to do it. Do they accept him? They do not. They reject him.
[6:14] And for 40 years, Moses is sojourning in the Arabian wilderness until the time of his own exaltation comes. And it's the same thing not true with David.
[6:26] Is he not anointed to be king by Samuel? Does he immediately inherit the kingdom? He does not. He must run and be persecuted in the wilderness himself, where he can speak of his wanderings and his tears until eventually he inherits the crown.
[6:43] The Lord Jesus Christ is baptized in the Jordan. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Will he immediately inherit the kingdom? He will not. He must descend into the valley of humiliation.
[6:55] And he must go to the death of the cross before he can wear a crown. And before you wear a crown, you must die on a cross as well. Take the cross upon your back and follow him.
[7:07] And it is the mark of Christian men and women that they are suffering people. They are suffering people. They have their trials and their tribulations in this world because they follow God.
[7:19] And the closer they cleave to him, the more they suffer. Because all who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Now all these examples in the Bible teach us that it is through much tribulation that we must enter the kingdom of God.
[7:36] And what do we have sustaining us? Well, the promises. In the dungeon in Egypt, Joseph still had his dreams. And I'm sure Satan told him that these dreams meant nothing, that they were just a fanciful working of his own imagination.
[7:50] But he cleaved to these dreams because he believed God had given those dreams to him. What did Joseph, what did Jacob himself have? Tending sheep with frost by night and with drought by day.
[8:02] What did he have? Well, he had the precious blessing of his father that he took with him when he left home. What did David have in the wilderness? Well, he had the remembrance of the anointing oil that Samuel poured upon his head.
[8:16] And so you could go on. The people of God are sustained by promises. That's how you live. And that's how I live with you because God gave us promises.
[8:27] And these promises keep us alive. And then again, closely connected to that or flowing from that, there's this. Jacob went to Paddan Aram as a chastisement and a discipline to himself because the Lord was going to use this place to teach Jacob the patience that he badly needed.
[8:51] Now remember, Jacob's, you could almost call it his besetting sin or his defect was this, that he could not wait for the Lord to work a thing out in his own time and purpose.
[9:05] But he, as it were, put his hand into the thing and tried to bring it to pass. And he would use means that weren't altogether healthy in trying to bring it to pass. Now I'm not going to go back into that because we looked at it in some detail and it would just take up time.
[9:20] But you'll recall how we saw that Jacob had a heart to do a good thing. He became frustrated and he became perplexed and he saw to bring a thing to pass.
[9:31] And in the end, all he did was to bring the chastisement of God upon his own head. Now, God was going to use Paddan Aram to show Jacob that he would wait for God, that he would learn to wait for him and to wait patiently for the Lord his God.
[9:51] Now, the grindstone against which Jacob was going to be ground was this man, Laban. Now, the Lord knows well how to take the rough edges of you and of me.
[10:04] And he has a grindstone somewhere in your life to do exactly that. It might be a person or a thing, a circumstance. But this man, Laban, is the grindstone.
[10:14] And this rock, Jacob, is going to be ground against him until the rough edges come off him. And that is how this man is used by the Lord. Now, I want with you to look, first of all, at Laban and see what kind of man he is.
[10:30] And there are two things that come before us. First of all, he's an idolatrous man. And then, secondly, he's a covetous man.
[10:41] Now, I'm well aware that the Bible lumps these two into one. The Bible calls covetousness idolatry. But still, we can distinguish the thing. He is idolatrous in a certain way.
[10:54] And then, he is covetous also. Now, first, he's idolatrous. And this in itself is a sad thing. Because he is a nephew of Abraham.
[11:08] He lives in Haran. And if you remember, his family had come from Ur of the Chaldees. And they followed Abraham on the way to Canaan, but they stopped halfway in Haran.
[11:22] And that is a picture of many souls who hear the gospel and they follow it part of the way, but they stop in the plain. Instead of going to the hill, they stop in the plain and they stop halfway.
[11:37] That was what happened to the family of Labor. Now, Rebekah heard the voice of God and she carried on and made her way to Canaan. But her brother, Laban, did not.
[11:48] You find him here still in a halfway house and still in no man's land. And you'll notice that he still possesses his idols.
[12:00] Now, they've called gods in chapters 30 and 31. We'll come to them in a moment, but these gods were household gods.
[12:15] They were called teraphim, little idols that were commonly possessed in the houses of these people sunk in heathenism and in idolatry.
[12:27] And they were placed in the home and they were often consulted when a person was wanting to know what to do. Sometimes they would cast lots to know what to do and sometimes they would consult these teraphim, these guides.
[12:45] Now, you'll find that these gods are placed in the household of this man, Laban. For example, when Rachel is leaving the home, she takes them with her.
[12:58] In chapter 31 and verse 19, we're told, now this is when Jacob was running away from Laban. We'd come to that at another time, but he ran away from the home and he took, of course, his wives and everything with him.
[13:15] And in verse 19, Laban went to shear his sheep and Rachel had stolen the images that were her father's. She had stolen the images that were her father's.
[13:27] And again, just later on in the chapter, you'll notice that Laban calls them gods. Verse 30 of chapter 31. And this is when Laban is reproving Jacob for running away.
[13:44] He also accuses him of stealing the gods. Now, Jacob knows nothing of it. Rachel has taken them quietly and Jacob knows nothing of it. And in verse 30, Laban says this, and now, though your woods needs be gone, because thou soared longest after thy father's house, yet wherefore hast thou stolen my gods?
[14:08] And Jacob answered and said to Laban, because I was afraid, for I said, for I ventured thou wouldst take by force thy daughters from me. With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live.
[14:20] Before our brethren, discern what is thine with me, and take it to thee. For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them. In other words, Jacob says to Laban, look amongst all my stuff, and if you find the gods in anyone's possession, let that person be put to death.
[14:35] He is so confident that nothing has been taken. But Rachel took the gods. Now, ancient history tells us that amongst these people, to possess the gods, the teratheme, meant in essence that you had the title deeds of a property.
[14:53] Now, I think that might help us to understand why Rachel took these things. Some people have thought that she was still steeped in idolatry. She was not. But she was bitter at the way in which Laban had dealt with her own husband and with herself and with her sister.
[15:09] And when they left the home, she took the gods so that Jacob would have what she considered to be rightfully his, and that was the property of her father. But you notice that Laban calls them my gods, as though he still values them like that.
[15:25] It is not so much title deeds to Laban that he is still immersed in the kinds of worship that they had in those parts of the world. They were little images of the gods and of their powers, and that is what they meant to Laban.
[15:40] He was an idolater, he was a polytheist, he believed in many gods, or a pantheist even, he believed that everything was God, or that nature was God, or God was nature, put it whatever way you like, it reads the same both ways.
[15:55] And of course that is old fashioned paganism, and it has raised its head in this western world so much in the last 50 years, especially in the last 30 years, with the advent of new age and everything associated with it.
[16:10] It is the rebirth, or the re-emergence, of paganism in our midst, the worship of nature, the worship of the land, the worship of the sea, of the wind, of the forces, of the stars, and of the planets, hence the rise in astrology, and in all these other things.
[16:27] They have exchanged, and maybe you have exchanged, the worship of the creator for the worship of the creature. And that is how these people lived also.
[16:39] Now, it is interesting that a man like Laban wants to keep the mysticism and the awe of religion, but he doesn't want to keep its chains, or what he considers to be its chains.
[16:50] give me the awe of the thing, give me the grandeur and the beauty and the spectacle of it, but keep the moral precepts out of it, keep judgment out of it, and eternal issues out of it.
[17:03] Let me just reverence and hold in awe the forces and the powers of nature. Now, my friend, idolatry is a much, much more subtle thing than the church today realizes, and I say that across the board.
[17:20] Some people read the Old Testament and they say, well, how can people worship little gods of silver or gold? Well, do you think that they really believe that these things were little gods?
[17:31] Do you think that? Do you think idolatry is that stupid? It's not that stupid. It is a very subtle thing. Their own little images were nothing but representations to them of what they really held in esteem or what they really honored.
[17:49] Whatever it was that they looked to, then they would represent it somehow to themselves. For example, you're familiar, maybe some of you, with the picture of the Hindu, some of the Hindu gods or representations where you have a figure having many arms stretched out.
[18:07] That is the power or the omnipotence of the thing figured in many arms. God prohibits that explicitly. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or that is in the earth beneath.
[18:25] Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them. He says you must not at all assume any kind of religious posture towards a thing that is crafted either in my image or in the likeness of something else.
[18:41] He expressly forbids the thing to be done. But it is amazing, you know, just how the world can be wrapped and caught up in idolatry. I'll give you an example of these things.
[18:56] Maybe one that comes a little closer to home than what I've just been speaking of there. The morning that Princess Diana herself died, the news was brought to myself early in the morning and I opened the scriptures.
[19:11] scriptures immediately because I was going to do that anyway. And my eye fell straight away on a text in Acts, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. Now it struck me that my eye had been led to that very text just moments after hearing the news that I had heard.
[19:30] And I knew that the Lord wanted me to read the passage and I read the passage. Now when I read the passage it was as though I had never read the passage before in my life. What an amazing thing it was.
[19:41] Their goddess was Diana. And the whole trade of the city revolved in making little statues of the goddess and in selling the statues to people.
[19:52] And all the time people were being encouraged to exalt and to venerate this woman, this goddess. And when the gospel came in it destroyed their trade.
[20:03] The people who were making the statues and earning the money were losing their livelihood in these matters and they gathered together, the guilds gathered together and said we must stop the gospel spreading and becoming prevalent in our midst.
[20:15] And they organized a mob and they organized an enormous rally in Ephesus. Now Ephesus was a large city at that time, a large city of the ancient world. And they all began to prod and to provoke one another shouting great is Diana of the Ephesians, great is Diana of the Ephesians, so that they could again stimulate the people into giving this woman her place so that they could again churn out the statues, allow the people to put the statues in the home.
[20:44] And what struck me as remarkable about that wasn't just the obvious parallel between that and the situation we had but the way in which days after this event people began to make their mugs, put the pictures on them, sell them, make the t-shirts, put the pictures on them, sell them.
[20:59] And there's everything going on around the funeral, the exaltation, who was like this person? Touch the hearts of everyone in the world, honored, perhaps in a hundred years time she'll be canonized.
[21:11] Have you ever wondered how people were canonized in the middle ages? It's quite simple. First of all to present the person in a way in which the person was not really, obliterate the faults and the sins in a person and trumpet up all that is good and all that is wholesome and then call it holy and call it of God.
[21:32] And when years have passed people look back on that person and say, well that person was perfection or without blemish. And they are canonized and before long people are praying to them. They become saints.
[21:44] And what are the saints with the statues of them? What are they but teraphim? That's what they are. Nothing less than that. Substitutes that people have for the true God, graven images.
[21:58] And of course it's easier for people to deal with gods that they can put into a graven image than to deal with the God of heaven and earth. Why did God prohibit making an image of him?
[22:11] Well I can't pretend to give all the reasons for that but one reason is this. Once you start to reduce God in that kind of way physically you start to reduce him spiritually and mentally in exactly the same way.
[22:26] It's far easier to deal with a God that you can put in front of you and that you can shape and that you can mold than the God of heaven and earth who refuses to be put into such a mold. The one who is so high and so lofty that he inhabits eternity.
[22:39] So pure and so searching. The one who sits on the great white throne away with the teraphim. And it's interesting that when revival came into Jacob's house the first thing he did was he found out the teraphim and he buried them underneath the oak tree along with the earrings which were associated with them.
[22:59] The earrings and the teraphim were buried underneath the oak tree and when God comes in power these idols are pushed aside. When the great revival of the reformation came all these things were pushed out of the church by the mighty power of God's spirit and he was again worshipped in the beauty of holiness.
[23:21] So Laban is an idolater. He worships idols. He worships nature and not the God of nature. And then again he's a covetous man.
[23:34] Now I indicated that that is more or less the same thing. The apostle says that covetousness is idolatry. By and large you find that people who only have nature as their God they tend to become covetous and desire to acquire like that.
[23:52] Now covetousness appears in his life very early on. There's a little reference to him when Rebecca leaves the house. Way back in chapter 24 and in verse 30 well we can read at verse 29.
[24:12] Now it's interesting how scripture just gives you a little bit of a thing here and a little bit there just almost like pieces of a jigsaw and you're able to see how things come together.
[24:22] In verse 29 chapter 24 if you remember this goes back to when Abraham's servant went to get a wife for Isaac and of course he found Rebecca verse 29 and Rebecca had a brother and his name was Laban and Laban ran out to the man and to the well.
[24:42] Now listen this is a very subtle thing and it came to pass when he saw the earring and bracelets upon his sister's hands and when he heard the words of Rebecca his sister saying thus spake the man to me then he goes and says come in thou blessed of the Lord wherefore standest thou without for I have prepared the house and room for the camels.
[25:06] Now he's almost gushing in his welcome of the man. Why? Well the scripture tells him because he saw the earrings and the bracelets and these were the gifts that had been given to Rebecca and the minute he sees that he's all over this man.
[25:22] Come in come in he says thou blessed of the Lord. He even uses Jehovah's name when it's convenient for him he'll use that name. And all the time what he has his eye on is wealth gain and increase.
[25:35] Now years have passed since then. I couldn't tell you offhand but somewhere around 50 and 50 plus years since that incident. And Jacob is now making his way out to Paddan Aram.
[25:47] And here you find the same old man and the covetousness has now come to the fore. Now we'll look at it this way. When Jacob arrives he comes to the well.
[26:01] And at the well he meets people about to water their flocks. and they're waiting until all the flocks gather so that no one has first share of the thing.
[26:13] And Jacob asks them do you know of Laban? And they say yes we know him well. Is he well? Yes he's well and Rachel is coming with the flock of sheep. And immediately Jacob sees Rachel.
[26:27] And I'm sure in his own heart that he knows that he has been led to this woman by the Lord himself. in the same way as Eliezer had been led to Rebecca. And by the way I don't know how I mentioned this when I was looking at Rebecca but it's interesting the meetings you find around a well in the scripture.
[26:46] Moses meets his wife Zipporah at the well in Arabia. Eliezer of course on behalf of Isaac meets Rebecca at the well.
[26:58] Jacob meets his own wife Rachel at the well. And you'll notice in all these cases it is the gospel being brought to an outsider.
[27:10] Moses took it to Zipporah who was an Arabian woman. Eliezer took it to Rebecca who was again a heathen woman. Jacob brought it to Rachel who was again a heathen woman.
[27:27] It's as though the well is a picture of the gospel itself. The well of salvation, the water of life. It is around the water of life that the Jew and the Gentile meets.
[27:38] It is the water of life that brings the world together. It is the water of life that converts us all. You'll notice in that connection that when Jesus goes outside of Israel to Samaria, where does he sit?
[27:50] Sits beside a well. Who does he meet? The woman of Sychar. And what happens? The woman is converted around the discussion which they have concerning the water of life and the well.
[28:03] The woman is brought to a knowledge of Christ. Again, it is the Jew and the Gentile meeting around the well, the water of life. And that is where Jacob here meets Rachel.
[28:16] Now, Jacob rolls away the stone and he gives Rachel the water that she needs. Now, Rachel immediately when she hears who he is, goes back and tells her father Laban.
[28:34] And then Laban goes out immediately and he welcomes Jacob and takes him home. We're told that it came to pass when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob, his sister's son, that he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house.
[28:53] And then he says to him, surely you are my bone and my flesh. And he stayed with him for the space of a month. Now, where does the covetousness come in?
[29:06] Well, it hasn't appeared yet. It appears during this month. Because during this month, Laban's mind starts to work. And it starts to work something like this.
[29:20] This man has come to our household and he claims to be the heir. But we know that he's the youngest of two brothers. We also know that he's left with nothing but the shirt on his back and the staff on his hand.
[29:36] He may claim to be the heir, but is he really the heir? If he is the heir, what is he doing here in this kind of condition and in this kind of situation? And Laban's mind starts to work in another way.
[29:50] After all, a covetous man isn't interested in deathbed promises or what my father said to me before I left the house or whatever. He's not interested in that. He's interested in making a mint out of Jacob and through the month he notices that Jacob is a very efficient man and that he's good at looking after the sheep.
[30:06] And so he's got a proposition to make to him. And he makes that proposal in verse 15 of chapter 29. 13. Because you are my brother, he says, should you serve me for nothing?
[30:19] Tell me, what shall thy wages be? And Laban had two daughters. The name of the elder was Leah and the name of the younger was Rachel. Now in verse 18 we're told that Jacob loved Rachel and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.
[30:39] Now, what's interesting about that is this. Laban, and we're going to see that in a moment, knew from the beginning what Jacob would ask for.
[30:52] He knew watching him, a shrewd man that he was, that he loved his daughter and he knew that he didn't have a penny to pay for the dowry. And so that what Jacob would probably ask for would be Rachel to be his wife.
[31:10] Why did that commend itself to labor? Well, for him it was a good piece of business as far as he was concerned. All he would have to do was marry off his daughter to this man and he would pay him nothing. And he would have the free labor in effect of this man for seven years.
[31:25] That was his plan and it worked out well. In fact, it worked out even better because as time went on he had an even better plan and that plan came to pass also.
[31:37] Now, Jacob doesn't know it, but when he's working for these seven years, he's a happy man in spite of his hardship because we're told that these seven years seem to him but a few days for the love he had to her.
[31:54] Now, I remember often being puzzled about myself, what did that mean? Because you would usually say that it would seem a very long time because of the love which he had for her.
[32:05] if he really loved her and had to wait seven years, you would say that it would seem a long time to him. But what the words mean is this, that seven years was a short, was a small thing as it were to pay for someone whom he loved so much.
[32:22] That's what it means. It seemed but a few days, it seemed but a little thing for him in comparison to what he was getting. He was getting someone whom he dearly loved and that was Rachel to be his wife.
[32:36] But he's not prepared for the trickery of labor because after seven years, Jacob asks for Rachel's hand in marriage and so Laban organizes a great feast.
[32:48] And when the festivities of the day are over and it's night time, it was the custom to introduce the bride into the chamber of the bridegroom. Now it appears and I have difficulty in finding it exactly what the precise custom used to be but it was something to do with veiling and it was to do with darkness.
[33:12] And Laban forces Leah to go into that chamber and she is veiled. And after the festivities and everything, it is at morning time that Jacob discovers that he has been tricked by Laban and that he has actually married Leah and not Rachel.
[33:35] Now that was Laban's plan because when Jacob says to him, what is this that you have done? Why have you deceived me? Laban says this, this must not be done in our country to give the younger before the first born, he says.
[33:52] Fulfill her marriage week and I will give you Rachel also if you serve me seven more years. Now, you'll notice the net effect of that is that Laban has fourteen years service out of the best man he had ever had and all that he has done in a sense is married his two daughters off to him.
[34:20] That is his plan and that is his deception. Now, notice idolatry, covetousness and lying. Here they are together.
[34:32] Remember Gehazi, the covetous servant of Elisha. He could lie through his teeth very easily because the moment a person is really wedded to the things of the world, he'll sacrifice anything to get it.
[34:46] He'll lie through his teeth. All right, if it's true that he shouldn't give the younger before the first born, why not tell that when the original compact was made? Seven years earlier, why not say, well it's not lawful to do that?
[34:58] I'll tell you the truth from the beginning, he did nothing of the sort. He exploited Jacob for 14 years. He exploited her. And not only that, but he sold his own daughters for his own gain.
[35:11] And it's interesting, when they left the house with Jacob, they say that very thing, that their father sold them and treated them cheaply just because he wanted gain, to himself.
[35:24] Notice avarice, covetousness. It comes into even the most tenderest bonds and it breaks them. The mother and the child, covetousness can break that bond.
[35:36] And how we see that, covetousness breaking that bond. How many families have been ripped asunder because of the love of gain, gain? I remember once being taken round a very extravagant housing plan and being told by the pastor there that every household there had ended up in divorce because every single family was living beyond their means.
[36:02] The husband was out working, the mother was out working, daycare was being paid for the children, an enormous mortgage was being paid, everyone was working, working, working for gain, gain, gain and no one, no one was spending time with the Lord and these families were rent asunder.
[36:22] And what happens to the children? Who knows? Who knows? It will take another full generation to see the full effects of these severings that have come into families.
[36:34] Laban doesn't care about Rachel and he doesn't care about Leah. What callousness to put his older daughter who I'm sure acted out his will out of fear and everything else.
[36:47] What callousness to put his older daughter in that position into which he put Leah. And the younger one to be married to the man she loved a week after her sister had married him.
[36:59] The manipulative cunning of a man who was using and abusing people for his own wealth and his own grandeur. My friends, there is nothing as destructive as the love of money.
[37:10] It is the root of evil, covetousness. How easily its roots go round about your heart and entangle you. How easily it masters people and gains a hold of them and he sells his own daughters for that.
[37:28] And everything is pre-planned. It's all pre-planned. And that's again what covetous business makes people scheming, pre-planning all these things to work out for their own benefit.
[37:44] And as I was saying in the prayer meeting just a couple of weeks ago, how hard it is to detect in ourselves and how easy to see it in others.
[37:55] How easy to conclude that this person there is covetous but that I'm not covetous at all. if your eye is single and clean, your whole body shall be full of light.
[38:08] But if the light which is in you be the darkness of covetousness, how great shall that darkness be. And that is Laban and he sold for the love of money.
[38:21] That's how he lived and that we believe is how he died. What of Jacob himself? Well I think I indicated this when I was looking at him last time with Esau.
[38:33] What is happening to him here? Well his sin is returning upon him. The Lord is visiting the chastisement of his own sins upon him.
[38:44] You think of him on the morning of that deception when he realizes what has happened. I wonder when he thinks about the thing where his mind goes. Well I would suggest that his mind first of all went back many many years before when Esau his brother came home from the hunt and said give me some of that red pottage and he said sell me this day your birthright.
[39:09] When he took advantage of his brother's hunger and his weakness in order to get the birthright from him. Or again his mind would go back to that chamber when he put on the skins on his hands and the skins on the back of his neck and the garments of Esau and in he goes to his own father and his father says who is it and he says it is Esau your first born.
[39:34] And when Isaac says to him how is it that you have found the venison so quickly he says that the Lord thy God gave it to me. I'm sure his mind went back to that.
[39:46] And many years afterwards as I also said when he had the coat of many colors with blood all over it and when his own son said to him Joseph is dead.
[39:56] years later when he discovers that Joseph is alive I am sure again his mind went back to all these incidents because the Lord revisits those sins upon us especially if they are writ large in the sight of the world.
[40:15] Writ large in the sight of the world. A sin that you do in private may be visited upon you in a private way. but you mark my words what you do in public as a scandal to the church will come back to you in precisely that way.
[40:36] In precisely that way. I said sin was a boomerang and that's exactly what it is. It will come back in an unmistakable form related to something in your own life and in your own experience.
[40:51] And that's how it was with Jacob. My friend you cannot sin lightly and remember that. Believer you cannot sin lightly.
[41:04] God will make you taste that it is an evil and bitter thing to sin against God. Then again Jacob learnt this. He learnt the flattery of the world.
[41:16] He learnt how manipulative the idolatrous and covetous people could be. He began to discover perhaps for the first time just how sunk in the ways of the world the world where.
[41:31] Now sometimes people can be ignorant of this and I don't know but very often people now let me put it this way it would be a good thing if we were all Christians from the womb.
[41:49] There's no doubt about that. the younger we would come to know the Lord the better by far it would be. But there's one thing that I can't help sometimes but notice and that's this that those who become the Lords very very early are sometimes perhaps a little slower to detect just how crooked or how deceptive or how beguiling the world can sometimes be.
[42:19] now I'm not saying that there's a necessary cause and effect relationship between these two things at all. I am not saying that. What I am saying is that I observe quite often that that tends to be the case and that people maybe who are raised apart from the world are a little more ignorant of how dark and how terrible the world can be in its influence and in its snares, in its cunning and in its deceptiveness.
[42:46] And that is why I often wonder, at people who see no evils in the things that Christians from the beginning have seen evil sin. You know, the early Christians of the first centuries, the second, third, fourth centuries, they immediately recognized that the Roman theaters and the Greek theaters were not for them.
[43:06] Even those who had been actors, they withdrew from these things because of the immorality associated with them. They always withdrew and that continued to be the pattern. And as far as I know, it never changed until the great enlightenment of our own century when suddenly everything becomes acceptable.
[43:23] I wonder what the reason for these things is. What is the reason that people now feel that sin isn't as contagious as it used to be? It isn't as powerful as it used to be, and it isn't as black as it used to be, when it is exactly all these things.
[43:40] All these things. Do you think sin is something that lives a million miles away that can never touch your soul? Do you think it's something that belongs to other people that can never in any way pass into your own life?
[43:52] Do you think it's absolutely safe to go to a rave or to a disco or whatever and come out of it unharmed and unscathed? Do you really think so? Do you not really think that it is the devil's abode and where he loves to be?
[44:08] Where he can make the flesh as attractive as possible and the ways of God as distasteful as possible? We have to recognize the world for what it is and the only way sometimes the only way to do that is to cleave close to the Lord and to watch the world in its operation to learn to read it and to learn to understand it to evaluate it and to seek God's discernment to evaluate it properly because Satan is alive as the man said he is alive and well on planet earth today and he is just as much here amongst us as he was hundreds and thousands of years ago and he has his own ways of working and Jacob learns that there are people for whom God is not in all their thoughts now if the first seven years were but a few days for Jacob then that was not true of the next seven years because they were nothing but envy and strife
[45:11] Leah has children Rachel does not there is a constant fighting between the two sisters it's a fighting that makes the home unpleasant and difficult one child after another is born none of them have any marks of grace in their souls at all until after fourteen years or so in the service of Laban Joseph is born and after a few years he has the marks of a goodly child and of a beautiful child and the longing grows in Jacob's heart to leave Paddan Aram and to go back into Canaan and by God's grace we'll look at that next time as the Lord enables us let us pray eternal God help us to understand thy ways and thy deals and make us O Lord continually sensitive to to the great power of evil and we pray that thou would help us to resist it in whatever form it appears we ask thee to deliver us from covetousness which is idolatry and to enable us to worship the true
[46:26] God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength lead us to Christ where we find salvation and peace that passeth all understanding for his sake Amen