Labor Pains

  • Matt Marino
  • Jan 24, 2010
  • Series: Genesis
  • Passage: Genesis 29:31-30:24

 1-24-10

Labor Pains

GENESIS 29:31-30:24

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Our title has a double meaning for Jacob and the formation of Israel. You may remember the curse given to the woman that God would multiply her pains in childbirth.

 

Jacob is about to have twelve children. Up until now the Patriarchs have been slow to get the people of God started and turned into this “multitude” of descendants that God had promised. Jacob will be different, and the names of these twelve children will become the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel later on.  

 

ISRAEL’S SINFUL FAMILY PLANNING

ISRAEL’S SIGNIFICANT BIRTH ORDER

 

The Big Idea is that God is perfectly conceiving of a people through the sinful labor of human parents. 

 

So let’s review: Last week we saw that God is redeeming his people through the sinful web of our sinful deception; now we’ll see that God is bringing these people to life through our sinful family planning.

 

DOCTRINE

 

ISRAEL’S SINFUL FAMILY PLANNING

The Mothers of Israel Envied Each Other

Leah envied Rachel because she was loved by Jacob (in marriage).

How the churches of God to this day envy each other for this very thing!

 

We need to be reminded that God alone brings spiritual life out of barrenness.

[1 Cor. 3:5-9] “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.”

 

Rachel envied Leah because she was favored by God (in childbirth).

Probably she feared that Jacob’s affections were turning toward Leah.

Spoiled by her beauty, she was more susceptible to make an idol of her husband: i.e. Putting him “in the place of God” (v. 1). 

 

[Jam. 4:1-3] “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

 

God shows his own love to both women in spite of their (and Jacob’s) sin.

 

“In his family relations Jacob continued to sow bitter seed.”   DEREK KIDNER

 

The Mothers of Israel Strove to Obey

Remember the command: Be fruitful and multiply! [cf. Gen. 1:28]

Remember the covenant: Conditional for the ethnic people.

Rachel’s two sons by her servant—Dan (vindicated) and Naphtali (my struggle)—are cited as external proofs that God’s favor is upon her (vv. 4-8).

 

But this is presumptuous and misses the first law of being God’s people.

[Mat. 3:9] “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”

 

The Mothers of Israel Repeated the Pattern of Manipulation

As with Sarah’s substitute womb [16:2-3] and Rebekah’s substitute blessing [27:5-13]…

 

So with these women’s servant-girls and mandrakes in an all-out “baby-making arms race”!

Mandrakes were believed to increase fertility (as their name suggests).

However, God made them fail and Leah conceive for having given them up.

 

ISRAEL’S SIGNIFICANT BIRTH ORDER

From Petition to Praise 

Leah clearly progressed in spiritual insight.

Three times she petitioned God for children for the sake of a happiness in her earthly husband.

Three times she named the child after this unfulfilled longing in her heart.

 

The fourth son, Judah, meant “praise.”

Leah stopped seeing her labor as the source of true joy, but simply gave thanks to God.

[Heb. 4:10] “…for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.”

 

Leah afterwards got caught up in the arms race, giving her servant and names that signified natural forces (vv. 9-13).

 

From the Unnatural to the Supernatural 

Redemptive history has already trained us to reject the natural way of salvation and inheriting God’s blessing. Now…

 

The inheritance would pass from the first born to the fourth?

[Ps. 114:1-2] “When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.”

 

Also, notice that the firstborn, apathetic Leah was deprived no more! Not only was she more physically fruitful, but (it turned out – in spite of the “dull eyes”) became more spiritually deep. 

 

From the Beginning of Redemption to its Means

The story is about to shift from the one through whom the inheritance passes, to the one who is put forward to secure the inheritance.

 

So, Joseph (not Judah) would soon take the stage, in spite of the line of Christ passing through Judah.

 

So, from the foreshadow of election to the foreshadow of redemption.

 

So just as we saw last week, Jacob’s wicked web is an extension of God’s perfectly good design—just like that…

These women strove (sinfully) with the supernatural design of God to tell a larger story than themselves:

***Kidner even suggests that Rachel’s “mighty wrestlings” (v. 8) can literally mean the very “wrestlings of God” in Hebrew.

 

[Col. 1:29] “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

 

Give me children or I shall die!”  Think of Knox’s cry, “Give me Scotland or I die!” Rachel’s cry was profound as it was prophetic. 

 

[Gal. 4:19] “my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!”

 

APPLICATION

 

 

To the Skeptic – We were not made to compete with each other for each other’s affection. Only a brief time on earth will show you that human affection cannot satisfy. 

 

To the Saint – God’s promises to you will not be frustrated by bad family behavior. 

 

[Ps. 27:10] “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me in.”

 

To the Sinner – If you have tried to compete and manipulate and strive and labor for God’s approval, you need to know that this can never work. 

 

If you do not know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are having labor pains that can’t be explained by a tough upbringing, or a rough season of being treated unfairly. God may be using those, but that isn’t where the real striving and anticipating and the contractions are coming from. 

 

They are coming from a certain knowledge in each one of us that this life is slipping away, that the Day of Judgment approaches, the law is as hard as a hammer, that the burden on our back we have tried to slip off by coming to principles and priests and magic formulas and hard work. But Jesus never tells us to come to any of these things…

 

[Mat. 11:28-30] “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”