40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 41

Episode Date: March 3, 2016

Chad and Daniel discuss childbearing competitions, mandrakes, sacramental sticks and the remembering of God. It's all a little weird... but God wrote what He wrote. Have a listen!  

Welcome to episode 41 of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. This is the first post-conference episode. So we've had a couple weeks off, but not really off. We have been at it, but we are back from Florida. We are drowning in the conference content as we try to get all that stuff out to you. Hopefully, you check some of that stuff out. All that content is amazing, and you can check that stuff all out over at crystalfast.org, and you can go to the conference media page, and most of it is out.

not all of it's out yet depending on when you listen to this but most of it is and if you haven't listened to any of it you can listen to it for about two days before you run out chad where are we at in genesis do you remember it's been a little bit well i do have to make a confession here i did have to go back and listen to the last few minutes of episode 40 to remember where we were uh i i had the general idea but i wanted to make sure that i knew where we left off so i have refreshed my aging memory and we are at sort of the end of chapter 29 and the beginning of chapter 30 so we're right in the middle of a baby making competition between jacob's two wives those are the best kind of competitions best kind of

competition yeah a pretty heated competition uh between these between these two sisters sisters so that's where we are uh into chapter 29 and beginning of beginning of chapter 30 if it's been a while since you've listened to episode 40 so this is this is where we are jacob is still in exile as you remember he uh he fled from his brother's anger and he went to live with his mother's relatives while he was there. He married two sisters, Rachel and Leah, and each one of them were competing for the affections of Jacob, but of course Jacob loved Rachel, and he was tricked into marrying Leah. So in the last few verses there of chapter 29, what we see is that in this baby-making competition, Leah is pulling ahead, because by the time we finish that

chapter she has four sons she has ruben then she has simeon then levi then judah so she has four sons and rachel has a total of zero and as we'll see at the beginning of chapter 30 rachel decides to draw from past unwise experience and uh go to plan b plan b plan b is bad in these competitions yeah plan b is almost always a bad idea we've seen that several times already in genesis so here's what happens i'll just read a first couple verses here chapter 30 now when rachel saw that she bore jacob no children she became jealous of her sister and she said to jacob get this she says to jacob give me children or else i die so jacob here's how jacob responds verse two then jacob's anger burned against rachel and he said am i in the place of god who has withheld

from you the fruit of the womb sound like a great start to uh to a chapter huh that's romantic it's a it's a weird thing to be like give me children like trying to say like this is your fault and he's got to be like clear like clearly this isn't on me like have you seen your sister like i mean she's got four kids that is obviously a you problem right yeah that's exactly it yeah i mean he's he's obviously fertile he has he's fathered four children so far but uh yeah rachel puts all the blame puts all the blame on him isn't it funny too how quickly things have disintegrated because you know jacob falls in love with rachel he's willing to serve not just seven but after he's tricked he's willing to serve 14 years to have her as his wife obviously

he uh is is devoted to her and loves her and yet how quickly things fall apart because here we have him his anger burning against rachel because she's demanding of him that which is impossible so uh what's she gonna do well that's the question isn't it uh what is she gonna do well she's gonna do what has happened before as we saw back in the early chapters of Genesis, when Abraham and Sarah were unable to have children, that promised son that God had told them they were going to have, they decided they would do what was relatively common in that culture, what was perfectly legal. They decided to use a surrogate mother. So here's what they did. Right after those two verses that I read, Rachel says,

here is my maid bilhah how about that for a name here's my maid bilhah go into her that she may bear on my knees that through her i too may have children so this is sarah and hagar all over again sarah can't have children so she says to abraham here's my maid servant hagar have sex with her and her children will be legally my children this is definitely like an ancient move that has definitely

died off this is not this is not happened you don't see this happening I've never heard of I've been I've heard a lot of things as a pastor you hear a lot of things people come and tell you a lot of stuff

this is not a i mean you name it i've heard it this is not you name this this is the one thing where no no no they know this does not happen anymore this is not a move that is made when you're struggling to have kids yeah this is a this is not a matter that's a very very common in pastoral counseling yeah what are we going to do well my my wife tells me that i can you know we have this housekeeper and uh strike a deal i can have sex with her and then the baby will be baby will be ours i mean that doesn't even make sense by the way like okay so here's the deal if if you're gonna go that route and you're like i gotta it'd be one thing

okay so here i guess maybe here's the difference right between between this and then like abraham and sarah is uh sarah didn't abram didn't have like a second wife and there were literally no kids right right here there's four kids currently and she's like i gotta have a kid but you don't end up with a kid that's any more your kid than the kids that are already there in fact even less because like that's your sister like so there's already there's already like there's already these four kids running around that are that are fam that are that are family blood if you if you do this move like this kid is less your kid than those are yeah at least the first four are your sisters it's in the family right bill hawes she's she's a she's a slave she's a maidservant it

doesn't make it doesn't make any sense at all like that's not that's not your kid any more than these are there's less than this what a what an insane deception it is and that's really what the insanity is driven by the jealousy she's jealous of her sister and so she is she is playing these mental games with herself where she thinks that she can do anything anything that's legally possible in order to pretend for herself as if she's actually bearing children for for jacob i mean it's really a it's a pitiful pitiable condition that she's in because she deems herself as a as a lesser wife a lesser wife than her sister is because she's unable to give jacob the the children that she wants to give him

so she resorts to uh she resorts to this and it works it always does work doesn't it these these plan b's at least uh temporarily so uh that's what they do jacob does what she says uh takes bilhah for a wife and jacob has sex with her and she conceives and bears a son so we have uh the first well it's not the first son of uh rachel it's the first son of her maidservant and his name is dan then uh we have it same thing happening again uh verse seven through nine we have a second son being born so he goes into her again and now we have naftali so now we're up to six sons we're halfway there to the 12 tribes of israel but they're not over yet because now we have another competition but the competition takes a different turn because

leah sees what's happening so she's born four sons and nothing's happened with her for a while presumably because jacob is no longer sleeping with her as we're going to see from what's coming up next so leia sees what rachel is doing and leia decides to do the exact same thing so the competition is increased first we have only leia bearing now rachel goes to her maidservant and has two sons through her and so leia says well i i can play this game as well so leia takes her maidservant whose name is zilpah and does the same thing and two more sons are born gad and asher so now we have jacob fathering children through three women through leah and through the two maidservants so that takes us up to uh takes us up to about verse verse 14 that is that

That's – these sisters right here, man. Don't marry sisters. It's always a bad idea to not marry sisters. Things are getting crazy, man. That's – oh, you're going to have him hook up with your maid? I'll just have him hook up with my maid. Two can play that game. I mean, like, how long can this kind of thing be perpetuated?

Jeez, man. Yeah, well, it's about to get even worse. so here's what here's what happens next uh so it's during the wheat harvest and leah's firstborn his name is is ruben he goes out into the field and he finds these uh these fruits they're called mandrakes uh it's a small yellow fruit kind of about about the size of a about of a tomato and uh evidently mandrakes were used for medicinal purposes in the ancient world but they were also associated with uh having these these uh powers of of an aphrodisiac in fact uh aphrodite was called the lady of the mandrake believe it or not so these mandrakes

are supposed to uh not only create the desire for sex but also to enable a woman to become pregnant so she sees rachel sees ruben who's leah's son she sees ruben coming in with these mandrakes from the field and so rachel goes to leah and she says please give me some of your son's mandrakes and i can i can only guess what rachel had in mind with these mandrakes but here's what her sister says she says it is is is it a small matter for you to take my husband would you take my son's mandrakes also i don't get the comparison not only are you taking my husband away now you're trying to take my son's mandrakes away as well it doesn't quite make sense i'm assuming that what rachel wants to do with the mandrakes is she thinks that they are

going to give her the power to conceive they're an aphrodisiac they were believed to be an aphrodisiac and so rachel thinks well nothing else has worked i'm gonna try the mandrakes now this is why this is why you guys got to stay away from this homeopathic stuff things just get crazy just get crazy here yeah she's uh she's grasping at straws here she's trying the the sad thing is to jump ahead the sad thing is that rachel ends up getting the mandrakes and presumably using them and she doesn't conceive it's leia who ends up conceiving So it was all in vain anyway. In fact, it backfired. She gets the aphrodisiac, Rachel does, and Leia's the one who ends up conceiving. I don't think this could be any more complicated and just a torturous mess than it has become here. so here's here's what happens uh here's how here's how rachel responds rachel says

i tell you what you give me your son's mandrakes and i'll let jacob sleep with you tonight in return so jacob comes in from the field that night and these this is this is a direct quote from leah leah walks out to meet jacob coming in from the field and here's what she says this this this is just dripping with romance she says you must come into me for i have surely hired you with my son's mandrakes how's that for a valentine's day card she has hired her husband to have sex with her purchasing his sex with her son's mandrakes which she sold to her sister in exchange for a night of sex with her own husband is that not sad or what i mean quite honestly it doesn't even make sense

it doesn't it doesn't make sense i mean leia is willing to do anything at this point because she is she is trying to earn the love of jacob that that is the the most depressing part of this story she's trying to earn the love of her husband and as we all know even though we we fall into the same trap ourselves love cannot be earned you cannot earn the love of another person but that's what she's all about that's why she every time that she has a son as we saw back in chapter 29 she thinks that her husband will love her when she had reuben for instance her firstborn she says the lord has the lord has seen my affliction surely now my husband will love me and then when she has her third levi she says now this time my husband will become attached to me

because i have born him three sons so every time that she has a child she thinks that this child is going to be the the magical key that unload that unlocks her husband's heart and it doesn't work because he doesn't love her and no amount of children that she has no amount of affection that she shows nothing that that she does is going to earn his love because that's not the way that love works it cannot cannot be earned it cannot be achieved it's something that is going to happen or it's it's not going to happen yeah you got it you got to feel rough for for leia yeah she is uh she is the most pitiable character in this in this story and as we talked about last time part of the way that we see god actually blessing her in the midst of her affliction is

that she is the mother the unloved wife is the mother of judah and she's the mother of levi so she's the mother of the son who will become the head of the tribe of the priest the levites and more importantly leah the unloved wife is the mother of the son judah the head of the tribe from which the messiah will come so even though she is the unloved wife god blesses her in making her the mother of the tribe from whence the messiah will come you know god has a an affinity for the unloved yeah he's always reaching out with his own love for those who have not received the love of another so he has mercy he has love he shows he shows who he truly is in compassion to to the unloved

leia even though we would think we would assume that it's going to be from rachel's children that the ultimate messiah would come yeah because she's you know she's the pretty one she's the favorite one she's the one that's loved by by jacob but once once more god shows us that his ways are not our ways he is he is operating with a different agenda than than we are yeah it's a it's an interesting thing that he looks at someone who is unloved he looks at that and says this would be a good place to bring out a priesthood in a in a royal lineage let's do that yeah and exact place that we've at least expected is where his priesthood and uh the kings the kings arise it really is i guess if you were to to bring out of this one one statement that kind of summarizes

what this is all about it's it's this idea of god creating everything out of nothing so he's creating out of this woman who really is in the marriage itself is nothing she's the unloved one she's the one who has seemingly no hope it's from her that god creates this priesthood it's from her that god creates this line of kings from which the messiah will come so that's what's going on uh so you know jacob does what uh he's hired to do he has uh he has sex with his uh his wife leia and and she has a son. She has a fifth son. So this time, she has Issachar, and then it happens again. She has another son, Zebulun. So let me give you a total here of where we are. So Leah has had one, two, three, four, five, six. So she's had six sons. Bilhah, that's Rachel's servant,

she's had two sons and zilpah that's leah's servant she's had two sons and rachel is at zero still so we're up to we're up to 10 sons and we're everything's about to change so we finally get to we finally get to verse 22 and it says god remembered rachel and god gave heed to her and opened her womb so she conceives and she bears a son and she says god has taken away my reproach and she named him joseph saying may the lord give me another son so finally after after waiting what's going to end up being uh 14 years after 14 years finally rachel has has her son joseph the first of the two sons that she's going to she's going to bear so uh that brings us to a very climactic change in the story of jacob because he's been

now 14 years and he served his time he served the years required to have both of these lives he has 11 sons and at least one daughter dina that we know of and he decides that it's time to go back because he served his 14 years he's done what he was required to do so uh he goes to his father-in-law who's also his boss he goes to laban and he tells him to send him away that he can go back to his own place into his into his own country but here's where things get a little bit complicated because things have been going really well for laban while jacob has been there when when jacob got there laban didn't really have a whole lot he had his family of course he had some flocks and herds but ever since jacob showed up things have turned

around for him his herds have expanded his flocks have expanded and his family's expanded because of the birth of all these sons to to jacob's jacob's wives his his daughters and so the last thing that laban wants to happen is for jacob to leave laban ends up as we've already seen this uh in his dealings early on but but laban is is almost jacob's equal almost jacob's equal in deception and enabled to to kind of turn situations around to his advantage he realizes that ever since Jacob has got there, that God has blessed them. So Jacob's bringing wealth to Laban.

And the last thing that Laban wants to do, wants to happen is for Jacob to leave and thus his wealth to depart. So Jacob, so Laban says to him, listen, I want you to stay and you just tell me your price. Whatever it is you want, that's what I want to give to you.

because i don't want to lose you and jacob jacob doesn't want to receive anything from laban he says you shall not give me anything he says but this this one thing is all that i ask of you and here's we get to the the very uh uh interesting story the speckled and the spotted and the striped sheep and goats yeah yeah yeah i'm really excited about the speckled and spotted But there is one thing that I think is interesting. There's a phrase, it appears numerous times in Scripture, and I always love it when it appears, because it's always a very good thing.

And it's this phrase, God remembered. It's never a bad thing. It's interesting, in Scripture, it's never bad when God remembers. there's never like there's not these instances where it's like and then god remembered all of this horrible stuff and wiped everyone out like whenever whenever god remembers and it is this i mean this phrase is not a phrase that that uh infers that like somehow he like forgot and then it was like oh snap rachel uh like it's not like that uh but that it's oh it's almost as if compassion was called to God's mind towards fill in the

blank, whatever it is that he's remembering, you know? And so even in scripture, you'll see, see God's people saying remember us because they know that God remembering you is a very good thing. And so I, when I think about, um, when I think about that phrase, I'm reminded of another phrase. It's in the, it's a new Testament phrase, but it's in the, it's in the gospels a couple of times where it says that speaking of jesus it says that he was jesus was moved with compassion that's sort of that that compassionate remembering right like

that i think that's more of what that phrase is is conveying is god moved with compassion toward rachel and that and that that's always a good thing so god forgets our sin and he doesn't call that to mind that that never comes back but when he remembers you or he's he's moved towards you it's always it's always in a it's always in a good way it's always in it's always with compassion it's always to give you something it's always to give you a gift or to deliver you which also calls to mind even the words he speaks um at the institution of the lord's supper which i think would be better stated you know do this in my remembrance which is not so much about me remembering him but me being there again and yes remembering that he has remembered me and that's

a very good thing because he delivered me yeah that's a that's some great points when god remembers he for god to remember is not really an act of the mind like it is for us right for god to remember is for him to act. So divine remembrance always entails divine compassion and activity. So the closest parallel that we can have is, for instance, if I remember my wife's birthday or if I remember our anniversary, that remembering is not simply a mental activity. When I remember someone's birthday or when I remember my anniversary, that means that I'm doing something decelerated so that's that's the way that god is when god remembers he acts in such a way as to save his people or when he remembers he acts in compassion toward them we saw this phrase earlier

in connection with noah's ark noah on the ark after they've been on the ark for so long it says that god remembered noah and like you said he didn't forget him it's not as if all of a sudden he calls to mind the fact that his people are suffering or that his people are waiting or that they've been afflicted in egypt for for so long but god is bringing them to mind in such a way that now he acts to give them that which he had intended to give them all along yeah so here he uh he he remembers rachel that is to say he shows compassion toward her he he puts the compassion that's in his heart into practice he makes it a gift to her and this gift takes the form of form of joseph we'll see this same phrase in the exodus that god remembers israel when they're in

captivity and his remembering affects a gift toward their deliverance yeah it's a good it's a good thing to be remembered by god and as you say you know god doesn't remember our sins he forgets them he forgets them he forgives them and his uh his remembrance is always for always for our good so thank god for uh thank god for his remembrance in this case it's kind of ironic in when he remembers rachel he gives he gives her joseph uh right after the birth of joseph is when they decide that it's time to to head back no they don't end up heading back but joseph is the last one born when they're in exile no other sons will be born through the rest of this chapter or even through chapter 31 we're up to 11 sons 11th one born here is joseph and

i find it interesting that that joseph is the last one born while they're in exile and then joseph is the one who himself is sent into exile at a later time so he is that he's kind of the you know, the exile child, if you will, the last one born, and then the first one who ends up in exile once more, and ends up bringing all of his brothers and his father down into exile with him in Egypt. So let's get to the speckled and the spotted. This is really actually a pretty interesting section because it shows how uh god is at work through jacob's own i don't know if you want to call it deception or not but through jacob's uh wise actions in taking care of the animals to actually take care of jacob so i'll just kind of summarize what goes on here what

happens is that laban says all right laban agrees to the deal with jacob he says okay here's what we're going to do i'm going to give you about 20 of the herd something like that because in in in the uh in the east in the near east the generally speaking sheep are white and goats are dark brown or black that's the typical colors over there and that would have been the typical colors in in these herds but what they do is laven goes through the herd and he takes out all of the animals that are that are different that are spotted or speckled or the sheep that have some black on them and he separates those out and from what i've read that'd be you know maybe 15 20 of the flock and the herd he separates those out and he gives those to jacob and jacob takes these

animals that are different that are multi-colored and he takes them quite a ways off like you know about three days journey which is about 60 miles 60 miles away so the herds and the flocks of jacob are clearly separated from the herds and the flocks of laban and the speckled and the spotted the multicolored herds and flocks jacob's sons take care of so we got this division there's plenty of space between these two these two groups of animals so they're not going to to be interbreeding and then jacob continues to take care of his father-in-law's flocks and herds but jacob has a plan and it's a plan that's actually revealed to him by god as we as we learn in the next chapter here's what he does he uh it's it almost sounds as if it's some sort of magic that's taking place

what he does is he takes these uh these sticks from various trees like almond trees and poplar trees and he peels back some of the bark from these these sticks making the the sticks spotted or speckled looking and every time that laban's flocks come in to get their their water he puts these sticks that are striped and spotted in the water troughs and it's and it's by looking at these and then breeding afterward that they begin to produce offspring that are spotted and striped and speckled so it's a it's an odd thing a very odd thing and like i said it's almost sort of sympathetic magic kind of uh sounding that by looking at these spotted and speckled sticks and then breeding afterward the offspring end up looking like the sticks they're spotted and

speckled as well. And one more thing that Jacob does, he also makes sure that only the strong breed with the strong, not the strong breed with the feeble. And the end result is that all of these baby sheep and baby goats being born, or at least a majority of them, end up being spotted and speckled and so they get shifted over to jacob's flock and jacob's herd so over time even though jacob starts out with only you know 15 50 to 20 his percentage grows while laban's decreases you get it folks i know you're listening you can't see this but dan is is looking at me like wow i'm hearing i'm hearing the the thing about this story i have i have i have atheist friends

that'll be like talking about the bible is ridiculous man the bible is and this is one of those stories that comes up and like they're like i mean she like you know they you know science is defied by looking at sticks and stuff and you're like man weird stuff it is weird it is weird stuff here would be my response and and and the bible exists wait because it's not till the next chapter we actually find out that jacob did this not because he was a magician or he didn't do this because he had you know some sort of strange strange uh insight into the use of nature to change nature or because or because actually like sheep can become spotted and respectful because they look at a certain kind of stick it's not like an action you can't

don't go try this at home that's what i was gonna say if anybody's listening to this that happens to be a shepherd or a rancher i don't don't think that you can replicate this behavior because what happens is an angel appears to jacob and tells him more or less what to do so he has this appearance of an angel we see this in chapter 31 and uh so that's what and and the angel more or less instructs jacob as to how to bring about this this change how to have these stripes speckled and spotted offspring and so that's what jacob does so it's really a case when you when you boil it down it's really a it's nothing more than one more example of how god is able to use something which is seemingly ordinary and even possibly ridiculous to bring about the result

that he wants i mean it's no different than many of the other things we many of the other miracles that we see throughout the old testament i mean for instance where a rod can turn into a snake or where uh naam of the syrian he's filled full of leprosy and yet all he does is go down and bathe in the water of the jordan river and all of a sudden he's he's cleansed or manifolds from heaven or water cones from a rock or any of the other any of the other miracles that you see throughout the old testament as well as the new testament what's happening is that that god's word is bringing to pass that which god desires for his people in this case the physical object that receives the word of god are these rods that are peeled that have the bark peeled back from them

And as a result of God's promise, working through this material object, Jacob is blessed. His herd increases and Laban's decreases. So God is able to use these sticks to bring about a reversal. Jacob, who goes empty-handed into exile, is now preparing to leave exile a rich man. Whereas Laban, who becomes sort of the Pharaoh to Jacob, if you will, ends up having everything taken away from him. And this is done not by ingenuity or by science or magic or anything like that. This is done solely because God is with his people. He's promised to bless them.

And this particular blessing takes the form of the increase of flocks and herds through the use of these sticks that have the word of God attached to them. as strange as it sounds it's a it's a crazy thing god will tell people to do some crazy stuff i suppose it's not any more ridiculous than uh saying pour this water over the head of this person in my name and i'll circumcise their heart yeah it's it's it's no more ridiculous than than that i mean this is this is one more illustration of how what we call the sacraments in the new testament are actually have a long long pedigree it dates back to i mean already the tree of life in the garden of in the garden of eden that tree of life did not in and of itself have the ability to convey life and said it was the tree of life because god's word said that it

was and it's the same with circumcision it's the same with passover it's the same with with uh gift after gift in the old testament where you have a physical object that god says is going to convey his promises in one form or another to his people and it could be as as crazy as these uh striped you know peeled back sticks could be as crazy as removing the foreskin from a from a man and by that very odd action now he's part of the covenant people of god or it could be that putting the blood of a lamb on your door is going to save you from divine destruction in each of these cases god is attaching his word to a physical object and through that is blessing his people as he does jacob here yeah i mean it's no different than um

there's a reason uh we're about out of time here we are out of time but there's a reason even even in the life of jesus he uses physical things all the time there's a reason he uses spit and dirt and makes mud and puts it on someone's eyes he doesn't need to do that he can just heal he can just heal a blind man's eyes but instead he he makes this mud and puts it on there and does it that way he could he could just make wine for the wedding at cana but instead he has him go get water and he turns that and he changes that into wine uh all all of these are done because he he uses the physical he does it to show us that that he's a god that that wants to that uses means to bring about his gifts yeah it's his way of continuing to affirm his good creation

a good creation that he himself still uses to to give gifts to to his people and this really comes to its acme in the incarnation where god himself becomes part of his creation he takes on human flesh and blood that is his final stamp of approval on his creation that it's through this creation that he chooses to give us himself and his gifts and this manifests itself in the water of baptism in the bread and wine the body and blood of the supper do all these physical objects the creator continues to use his good creation in order to give good gifts to us who are his

creatures because he remembers us and that is full circle and we are out of time so guys thank you for joining us hey all this stuff all the stuff we do at Christ so fast

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