Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Do You Respond to Challenges? | Torah | Genesis 29:1-14

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

What is your perspective of hardships? Do you view them as major setbacks or growing challenges? In today's episode, Keith shares that perspective determines everything in life. Tune in to find out what you can learn from Genesis 29:1-14 about how to respond to challenges in life. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Genesis 29:1-14 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Hey, can I read you a letter a mom and dad received from their daughter who just left for college? I promised it has some twists and turns. All right, here's what she wrote. Dear mom and dad, it's been three months since I left for college. I've been remiss in writing, and I'm very sorry for my thoughtlessness and not having written before. I'll bring you up to speed now, but before you read on, please sit down.

You're not ready to read any further unless you're sitting down, okay? Well then, I'm getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out of the window of my dorm when it caught fire shortly after my arrival are pretty well healed. I only spent two weeks in the hospital, and now I can see almost normally and I only get those headaches once a day. Fortunately, the fire in my dorm and my jump were witnessed by an attendant at the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one who called the ambulance. He also visited me in the hospital, and since I had nowhere to live because of the burned down dorm, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It's really a basement room, but it's kind of cute. He's a very fine boy, and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning on getting married.

We haven't set the exact date yet, but it will be before I start to show. Yes, Mom and Dad. I know how very much you are looking forward to being grandparents, and I know that you will welcome this little baby and give it the same love and devotion and tender care that you gave me when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has a minor infection, which prevents us from passing our premarital blood test, and I carelessly caught it from him. The doctor assures me that the penicillin injections will clear all this up soon. I know that you will welcome him into the family with open arms.

He's kind and although not well educated, he is ambitious. I'm sure that you'll love him just as much as I do. Now that I have you up to date, I want to tell you that there was no dormitory fire. I did not have a skull fracture or a concussion. I was not in the hospital. I'm not pregnant and I'm not engaged. However, I am getting a D in sociology and an F in chemistry. And I wanted you to be able to put those grades into their proper perspective.

Signed, your loving daughter. perspective determines everything doesn't it if you frame it the right way a parent can be really happy with a d and an f the difference between thankfulness and complaining is often perspective in genesis chapter 29 jacob runs into some significant hardships and whether we think of those hardships as good or bad is determined in large part by our perspective if our perspective is that the good life is an easy, comfortable, hassle-free life, then hardships are seen as an obstacle keeping us from what we really want. But if our perspective is that the good life is the life that's more like Jesus, then hardships become helpful because they help us toward our goal. Perspective

is powerful. We've been looking at the life of Jacob and digging everything we can of out of these chapters in Genesis to learn what we can about ourselves and our relationship with God. God is remaking Jacob from a lying, deceiving, manipulative man to a godly leader of his people. It's a long process of spiritual transformation. For every two steps forward Jacob takes, it seems like he takes a step backwards. In other words, Jacob is a lot like us. This thing that God is doing in Jacob's life, this spiritual transformation thing, well, it's the same thing God wants to do in every Christian's life, taking us from where he found us,

and making us more like Jesus. So in chapter 29, Jacob is confronted by his sin. He gets what's coming to him, or you might say that he learns that what goes around comes around. In chapter 29, Jacob the deceiver is deceived. Jacob the liar is lied to. Jacob meets his match. Before I read the first couple verses of this chapter, I just want to remind you that Jacob's mom and dad had sent him on a 550-mile journey back to their hometown, Haran. He went there to find a wife. Haran was where Jacob's grandfather Abraham was from, and they wanted Jacob to have a wife from among their own people. All right, here we go, verse one. Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the Eastern peoples. There he saw a well in the field with three flocks of sheep lying near it

because the flocks were watered from that well. The stone over the mouth, of the well was large. So when Jacob arrives at his destination, he happens upon this well, and there are shepherds with their flock of sheep sitting around waiting for enough of them to gather so they could remove the large stone from the well and then water their sheep and then put the stone back. And we start to see some similarities between this story and how Jacob's father, Isaac, found a wife. Except it's not so much the similarities were supposed to pay attention to as much as the differences. Remember that when Abraham sent his servant to look for a wife or Isaac, the servant prayed and asked for God's direction. Here we find Jacob in a similar situation, except Jacob doesn't

pray. That's a sign that this isn't going to go as well. These shepherds that Jacob met at the well, they know his uncle Laban, and they tell him that Laban's daughter, Rachel, is on her way to the well to water her sheep. Jacob says to these shepherds, remember he's just met them. He said, look, the sun is still high. It's not time for the flocks to be gathered. Water your sheep now and take them back to the pasture. So you get this idea that Jacob is very full of himself. He's bossy. He's overconfident. The shepherds say, we can't until all the flocks are gathered and the stone's been rolled away from the mouth of the well. Then we'll water the sheep. See, this stone is really big, the one that's protecting the well.

And so they have to wait until all the shepherds are there so that they can move it together. But while they're still talking, Rachel comes up with her father's sheep. And when Jacob sees her, he is head over heels in love with her. It's like love at first sight. And he bows up and he walks over to this stone and he moves that stone all by himself. He's trying to man up. Remember, he got the blessing from his brother. by cheating and lying, and now he's trying to get the girl by flexing his muscles.

As soon as Laban, whose Rachel's father, heard about the news that Jacob was there at the well, he hurried out to meet him. Now, the reason Laban, Rachel's dad is hurrying out to meet Jacob is because he's expecting Jacob to come with gifts. If he's coming to this town to look for a wife among his own people, then Jacob is expected to bring gifts with him, herds or things of value, money, coins, gold, silver. But Jacob doesn't have any gifts. Remember that he's on the run? He's on the run because his brother Esau, who he lied to and deceived out of his birthright,

was trying to hunt down Jacob and kill him. So Jacob had to leave town quickly. So now what we're seeing is that the consequences of Jacob's sin are catching up to him. Because he lied to Esau, he's on the run. Because he's on the run, he doesn't have the proper gifts to give Laban in asking for his daughter's hand in marriage. Jacob is beginning to reap what he sowed. Here's what Paul writes in the book of Galatians. Do not be deceived.

God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sews. The one who sews to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the spirit, from the spirit will reap eternal life. I think this is a lesson that we all need to learn. God forgives our sin, but that doesn't mean that the consequences of our sin are removed. God can forgive a person for being a bad husband or father or wife or mother, but that doesn't mean that damage isn't done to kids or to the spouse.

God could forgive someone for abusing alcohol, and yet that person may struggle with alcoholism for their entire life. God may intervene and heal and completely free a person from the past choices that they made. But that's not the normal way that God works. See, God had forgiven Jacob, and he could have given Jacob a fresh start. He could have given him camels and gold and everything else he needed to take to Laban when he asked for Rachel's hand in marriage. But he doesn't do that.

The consequences of Jacob's sin follow him. It really is true that a person reaps what that person sews. When we sow to please our sinful nature, then we reap the consequences of it. And when we sow to please the spirit, we will reap the consequences of that, the rewards of that, including eternal life. I guess I walk out of this chapter freshly warned that the consequences of sin are real, and I want to be sobered by that. But I also walk out of it with this encouragement that God isn't going to leave me in my life where I am now. He's going to make me confront my sin because he wants me to grow in my faith. So let's go back to perspective.

If what I want is a godly life, if what I want is to grow in patience and love and joy, humility, then the hardships that come my way, well, they're gifts, they're gifts from God because they're part of the process he's using to shape me and make me the kind of person that he wants me to be. How about you? How do you respond to the hardships and challenges that come into your life? Are they obstacles or are they gifts? I know they're not pleasant, but can you see that God is at work in them? And if what you want is to follow Jesus, if what you want is to be more like him, then you can embrace the hardships that come into your life. That's the right perspective. That's the biblical perspective. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter.

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