Dirty Gold Part 2

Introduction

Genesis 29:15–26 NKJV

Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my relative, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what should your wages be?” Now Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were delicate, but Rachel was beautiful of form and appearance.

Now Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, “I will serve you seven years for Rachel your younger daughter.”

And Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to another man. Stay with me.” So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her.

Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to her.” And Laban gathered together all the men of the place and made a feast. Now it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. And Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah as a maid. So it came to pass in the morning, that behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you? Why then have you deceived me?”

And Laban said, “It must not be done so in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn

•     Why then have you deceived me? What an interesting question for JACOB to ask… for JACOB of all people to ask “Why then have you deceived me?”

•     Do you guys know what the name Jacob means? It is a Hebrew word, Ya-kov… it caries with it the meaning of someone grabbing you by your heal and pulling you back… like being in a race, and they are just behind  you and as they are running they grab your heal and pull you back as they pull themself forward.

•     Ya-kov, Jacob… it means heal grabber… it means trickster, deceiver, supplanter…

Genesis 27:36 NKJV

And Esau said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright, and now look, he has taken away my blessing!”…

•     Jacob was named “deceiver” he was named “trickster” he was named “supplanter, usurper, heel grabber”… he get’s what he wants, he supplants you by way of deception, cheating and trickery…

•     Jacob is a dirty dude sometimes, and we have seen that time and time again… faithless, fearful, and sinful… but he is also on of the patriarchs, a father of the faith… through him will come the Savior of the world. There is so much bad about this deciever, but also, there is a lot of God… and with God comes goodness… Jacob is dirty, yes, but he also has increadible value. Jacob is dirty gold.

•     Welcome back to our series “Dirty Gold”, where we talk about the inherent value in mankind, that we are made in God’s image and have such great potential value… but we also talk about the filth of sin and deception.

•     Last week we had a rather encouraging message, where we talked about your value to God… that no matter what people say, and no matter what you have done in life, God still finds you valuable enough to die for you… to love you… to wash you and to protect you…

•     This week will be a bit more fiery, but we will end the sermon next with with the refiners fire… so this week we are just pre-heating the oven so to speak… now, before I turn up the heat, let’s pray and invite Jesus into this message.

•     Let’s get right into it this morning with point one, something we have talked about many times before “You reap what you sow”.

Point One – You Reap What You Sow

Genesis 29:18–25 NKJV

Now Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, “I will serve you seven years for Rachel your younger daughter.”

And Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to another man. Stay with me.” So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her.

Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to her.” And Laban gathered together all the men of the place and made a feast. Now it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. And Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah as a maid. So it came to pass in the morning, that behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you? Why then have you deceived me?”

•     Jacob made a deal with Laban, his uncle… Jacob said he would serve Laban for seven years in order to marry Rachel, Laban’s younger daughter…

•     And Laban agreed, so Jacob serves Laban as a shepherd, presumably, and after seven years Jacob says “time to pay up” so a wedding is planned… Jacob probably has a good deal to drink… it is dark… there is a thick vale over his bride… he marries her, takes her to the marriage bed, does the thing you do on your wedding night… then in the morning, when the sun is up, the vale is off, and he has sobered up… he takes a long hard look and… WAIT A MINUTE! This is not Rachel, this is Leah!!!!

•     He storms out of his room, finds his uncle, and Jacob demands “WHY THEN HAVE YOU DECIEVED ME?!”

•     The deceiver Jacob, has been deceived. The supplanter has ben supplanted. The heal grabber has found his own heal in the hands of ol’ uncle Laban.

•     How does it feel Jacob? How does it feel to be tricked? To be deceived? To have your plans for life supplanted by another?!

•     You see Jacob has spent decades sowing a harvest of deception… and now, at the ripe old age of 77, the harvest has come in and it is finally time for Jacob to start reaping all that which he has sown.

•     This is a spiritual law, church, you reap what you sow… it is just as much a law as the law of gravity… what you drop falls… so it is, what you sow is what you will reap…

Galatians 6:7–8 NKJV

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.

•     You reap what you sow… if you don’t know what those words mean, don’t worry! You are in good company. For the longest time, I thought ‘you reap what you sow’ was about sewing clothes, like a seamstress or a tailor. I pictured a frustrated seamstress ripping out crooked stitches… like “you must rip the stitches that you sew”… But I was totally off base… Reap and Sow are agricultural terms… sow being spelled here S-O-W not S-E-W… and all it means is “You harvest what you plant”

•     If you plant a field with corn seeds… you are going to get a harvest of corn… if you plant an orange tree you are going to get a harvest of oranges.

•     You can’t plant asparagus and expect broccoli… you can’t plant oranges and expect apples… You get what you plant, you reap what you sow…

•     So spiritually speaking, what this verse in Galatians is teaching us, and really this is taught all throughout the Bible… it is teaching us that if you live a life of deception, you should expect a harvest of deception.

•     And of course the flipside is true too… if you live a life of generosity you should expect a generous harvest… if you live a life blessing God and blessing others you should expect a harvest of blessing… if you live a life striving for holiness, then expect a holy harvest… you reap what you sow.

•     This is so important, it is such a black and white law that this verse starts out with “God will not be mocked”…

Galatians 6:7 NKJV

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

•     In otherwords, you insult God when you plant apples and ask God for oranges.

•     “God I know I spent the last year planting a field with kale seed, but when the harvest comes God, could you make it come up as corn… because it turns out no one wants to buy kale anymore and the subsidies on corn are really God, so if you could just take my kale seed and turn it into corn… that would be great”.

•     God hears that prayer and says “How dare you mock Me! Are you stupid, or do you just think I am suped… Kale you sowed, so kale you shall reap”.

•     Now let me take you back to the wedding night… keep this spiritual law in mind… keep all of Jacob’s previous deceptions in mind… let’s go back to the wedding night… in the dark, Jacob can’t see his bride… he doesn’t have the sense of vission to rely on… he can’t see…

•     But he can smell his bride… and she smells like the perfume of Rachel.

•     And he can feel her… now I only have had one wedding night, but there was a lot of feeling going on, if you know what I mean… and I bet this woman felt like the smooth soft skin of Rachel.

•     And I bet the kisses of his lips on her checks tasted like the kisses he gave Rachel at the well.

•     Do you guys see where I am going with this? She tastes like Rachel, she smelt like Rachel, she felt like rachel… but he could not see her to be sure… he trusted his other senses and had sex with her, consummating the false marraige… and in the morning… behold, it was not Rachel, it was Leah. 

•     Just seven years early Jacob made sure he smelt like Esau, and Jacob made sure he felt like Esau, and Jacob cooked food that tasted just like Esaus… and Isaac his father, who was going blind and could not see… trusted his other senses and was deceived.

•     Jacob is reaping what he has sown.

Proverbs 22:8 NKJV

He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow…

Job 4:8 NKJV

Even as I have seen, Those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.

•     A more modern way of saying this might be “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” or “If you play in the mud, don’t be surprised if you get dirty”… and of course, as the series title suggest, Jacob is finding out what living life as dirty gold is really like.

•     Here is the application for you church… I believe in spiritual clean slates, the only time in the history of the universe where the law of reaping and sowing has ever been broken in when Christ saves you… at that moment, when you are born again, you are given a spiritual clean slate… I will talk more about this at the end of the sermon… but just because you are born again does not mean you get away from the consequences of your sin.

•     You might still have bad credit that needs to be fixed… I promise you Equafax does not care if you are born again or not.

•     You might still have legal proceedings to deal with… warrants don’t go away just because you got saved… I wish so much that they did, but that is not the way the justice system works.

•     You might have spent a long time destroying relationships with friends and family… getting saved doesn’t fix that overnight… you still have to reap the results of the division you have sown.

•     But the good news is… you now have a Savior to comfort you, a Father to guide you, and the Holy Spirit to help you.

•     Now if I have to harvest a massive field of thorny weeds that I have spent my life planting, I would much rather harvest those weeds with the help of a Big Bud 747 tractor with a full climate-controlled cab, 1,100 horsepower, 20-foot-tall-tires and a twin-disc transmission built for the heaviest loads and hardest tasks…

•     I would much rather use that Big Bud tractor to help me harvest acres of thorny weeds then I would try to harvest them by hand on my own.

•     It would take me an ETERNITY to harvest all the weeds I planted in my life on my own… but with the help of Big Bud it would be done in an instant… OH!!!! THAT’S THE GOSPEL Y’ALL… I preaching to some Iowans this morning!

•     Y’all picking up what i am laying down, I ain’t talking about tractors, I am talking about God… come on y’all he will help you reap the things you have sown… but again, more on that in a few minutes…

•     One more word of encouragement here… start sowing a harvest of righteousness now… it’s not too late… start planting a harvest of righteousness now, that you may harvest the fruits of righteousness in the land of the living… start doing good, serving God, loving and forgiving others, growing in Christ, being discipled, serving God in and out of the church…  even as you reap the harvest of your old life with the help of Christ you can start sowing a new harvest, you can start telling a different story with your life.

•     And as you do so, let me pray this over your life:

2 Corinthians 9:10 NKJV

Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness,

(pray a quick prayer about increasing the fruits of righteousness).

•     Now quickly, let’s go to my second point this morning… it is very similar to the second point from last week so I won’t belabor the point… God Sees Through the Dirt

Point Two – God Sees Through the Dirt

Genesis 29:25–26 NKJV

So it came to pass in the morning, that behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you? Why then have you deceived me?”

And Laban said, “It must not be done so in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.

•     Might I suggest something… I think Jacob KNEW that it was inappropriate to ask for the younger daughter to be given to him in marriage.

•     Jacob is not stupid, he is anything but… and he clearly understands the customs of the land… I mean he spent his life trying to manipulate those very customs for his own gain.

•     Now here he is, 77 years old… a bachelor… and he has the audacity to be PICKY about which of the two beautiful young women he is going to marry?!

•     “Well Leah had weak eyes” YEAH WELL YOU GOT WRINKLES OLD MAN! Why you being picky? I think this might have been another form of his deception, another selfish victory he was trying to grab for himself, usurping or supplanting Leah, and the marriage that was rightfully hers and trying to win Rachel instead.

•     But not only that, I would suggest that God intended it to be Leah all along. Yes Rachel met Jacob in the field, and there is some odd theological and historical context to having multiple wives that I don’t want to get into…

•     But just consider this… Jacob the younger userped his older brother Esau… and now Jacob is trying to get Rachel the younger to userp her sister… but God flips the script… Jacob reaps the deception he has sown… and really think God intended Jacob to marry Leah… Why do I say that? Because for all the love and affection Jacob had for Rachel, it was from LEAH that Christ comes. The savior of the world comes from Jacobs rightful wife, whether or not Jacob agreed with that decision… and that is the heart of this point… God sees through the dirt.

•     Through all the filth and dirt and muck… God sees through it, and makes a way for His plan to come forth, for His truth, His glory, His salvation to come forth, even when we do our best to cover His gold with our dirt… God sees through the dirt and makes a way.

•     Now am I saying that God deceived Jacob? No, but God allowed it to happen, just as God allowed Isaac to be deceived.

•     And more importantly what I am saying is this… through all the deception… the deception of Jacob, the failures of Isaac, the deception of Laban… through it all, the end of the matter was God’s glorious plan for salvation moving forward… the end of it all was a child being born to Leah named Judah… and through Judah Christ… and through Christ yours and mine and many other’s salvation.

Proverbs 19:21 NKJV

There are many plans in a man’s heart, Nevertheless the Lord’s counsel—that will stand.

Isaiah 46:10 NKJV

Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’

Psalm 33:11 NKJV

The counsel of the Lord stands forever, The plans of His heart to all generations.

•     Here is the encouragement for you church. If you are born again, truly redeemed by grace… then you are God’s gold. And as we talked about last week,  God protects the value of His gold.

•     Moreover, all of your stubbornness, all of your stupidness, all of your rebellion… It’s not enough to through off the plans of God. His plans and His pleasures will come to pass, you just aren’t strong enough to through off His plans with your filth.

•     And this should be encouraging to you because if you would simply not give up… if you would keep fighting the good fight, keep running the race… When you sin, repent and get back on the straight and narrow… when you are stupid, repent, and learn from your mistakes, when you are stubborn, repent and soften your heart… If you do this and keep doing this until the day that you die then God will get the victory through you.

•     It is as simple as DON’T GIVE UP.

•     And maybe even better news, at least for me, is “If you give up… God is still going to win… you may not be on the winning team… but God is still going to win”.

•     As for me and my house, we are going to stay on the winning team!.

1 Corinthians 15:57 NKJV

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

•     Now let me conclude by going back to where we started… you reap what you sow… except in one very specific, eternity changing instance.

Conclusion

•     Psalm 126 was the first Psalm I ever memorized. I think it was for B90 one year, we were asked to memorize a Psalm and this was the psalm we memorized… and of this psalm it was the ending two verses that always stuck out to me…

Psalm 126:5–6 NKJV

Those who sow in tears
Shall reap in joy.

He who continually goes forth weeping, Bearing seed for sowing, Shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, Bringing his sheaves with him.

•     Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.… those who go forth weeping will come back rejoicing…

•     This seems to go against the law of sowing and reaping…

•     That is, unless someone did something crazy, and changed the harvest…

•     That is what Jesus did on the cross for you… He reaped what you sowed, so that you could reap the reward that truly belongs to Him.

Gospel Call