Worldly Wisdom Vs Godly Wisdom

Introduction

Genesis 30:37–31:16 NKJV

Now Jacob took for himself rods of green poplar and of the almond and chestnut trees, peeled white strips in them, and exposed the white which was in the rods. And the rods which he had peeled, he set before the flocks in the gutters, in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink, so that they should conceive when they came to drink. So the flocks conceived before the rods, and the flocks brought forth streaked, speckled, and spotted. Then Jacob separated the lambs, and made the flocks face toward the streaked and all the brown in the flock of Laban; but he put his own flocks by themselves and did not put them with Laban’s flock.

And it came to pass, whenever the stronger livestock conceived, that Jacob placed the rods before the eyes of the livestock in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods. But when the flocks were feeble, he did not put them in; so the feebler were Laban’s and the stronger Jacob’s. Thus the man became exceedingly prosperous, and had large flocks, female and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

Now Jacob heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, “Jacob has taken away all that was our father’s, and from what was our father’s he has acquired all this wealth.” And Jacob saw the countenance of Laban, and indeed it was not favorable toward him as before. Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your family, and I will be with you.”

So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field, to his flock, and said to them, “I see your father’s countenance, that it is not favorable toward me as before; but the God of my father has been with me. And you know that with all my might I have served your father. Yet your father has deceived me and changed my wages ten times, but God did not allow him to hurt me. If he said thus: ‘The speckled shall be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore speckled. And if he said thus: ‘The streaked shall be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore streaked. So God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me.

“And it happened, at the time when the flocks conceived, that I lifted my eyes and saw in a dream, and behold, the rams which leaped upon the flocks were streaked, speckled, and gray-spotted. Then the Angel of God spoke to me in a dream, saying, ‘Jacob.’ And I said, ‘Here I am.’ And He said, ‘Lift your eyes now and see, all the rams which leap on the flocks are streaked, speckled, and gray-spotted; for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar and where you made a vow to Me. Now arise, get out of this land, and return to the land of your family.’ ”

Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, “Is there still any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house? Are we not considered strangers by him? For he has sold us, and also completely consumed our money. For all these riches which God has taken from our father are really ours and our children’s; now then, whatever God has said to you, do it.”

This is the Word of the Lord, Amen?
You may be seated

•     Good morning church!Welcome back to our series on one of the stranger sections of scripture.

•     Now this series focuses on this particular verse out of this section of scripture:

Genesis 30:43 NKJV

Thus the man became exceedingly prosperous, and had large flocks, female and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

•     JACOB BECAME EXCEEDINGLY PROSPUROUS! Man I want that for my family! I want to be exceedingly prosperous, I want to provide a good life for my children and my wife.

•     I don’t necessarily want to be exceedingly wealthy, wealth is part of it, but I don’t want to go overboard because the Bible says it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven then it is to get a Camel through the eye of a needle… but I do want to have enough to not have to worry about food or bills, amen?

•     And I think it is okay to desire that kind of prosperity. We are talking JC Penny Prosperity, not Louis Vuitton prosperity, amen?

•     Now Jacob and Laban both desired prosperity, and what we read in the end of Genesis 30 and all of Genesis 31 is the tale of two men seeking prosperity from different sources, so God lead me to preach this series “The Source of Prosperity”… to answer the question “Where does prosperity come from?”

•     Now lest you think this is a prosperity centered church, understand that this is now our 100th sermon from Genesis! You just happen to be here in a section of scripture that talks about prosperity, and I think God has something for you this morning, amen?

•     Now we started this series last week going over the final six years of service that Jacob gave to Laban.

•     And just as a little bit of recap, what is happening here is that Jacob has already served Laban for 14 years, 7 years for each of his two daughters, Leah and Rachel.

•     In this time Jacob worked as a shepherd for Laban and Laban’s flock went from tiny and poor to large and prosperous, and now after 14 years of Service Jacob is ready to start building his own wealth and providing an inheritance for his children and grandchildren.

Genesis 30:29–30 NKJV

So Jacob said to [Laban], “You know how I have served you and how your livestock has been with me. For what you had before I came was little, and it has increased to a great amount; the Lord has blessed you since my coming. And now, when shall I also provide for my own house?”

•     Laban is now rich because of this overflowing blessing, and Jacob is old and ready to go start his own life before it is too late. He asks for a fair wage and to be sent off, and Laban and Jacob come to this agreement.

•     Jacob can have all the stripped and speckled livestock, which would be about 5 percent of the flock… that seems more than fair. Jacob even agrees to work for another six years for Laban for these wages… Laban agrees, but then he does something crazy… HE STEALS ALL OF THE STREAKED AND SPECKLED AND SPOTTED LIVESTOCK before Jacob can go and take them for his own flock.

•     So last week we talked about two points. First, Laban recognized his prosperity was due to simply having Jacob around, Jacob was so blessed that it overflowed onto Laban.

•     But second, we learned that theft is really just a source of poverty… because at the end of six years Jacob had a strong and mighty flock, and Laban was left with a weak and feeble flock. Laban’s theft was a source of poverty for Laban… and it will be a source for poverty for us if we give into theft.

•     This week, we are going to talk about the rods of poplar and almond that Jacob cut streaks into, we are going to talk about where Jacob THOUGHT his prosperity was going to come from, and we are going to talk about where his prosperity actually comes from. So this second sermon in the series “The Source of Prosperity” I have titled “Worldly Wisdom Vs Father’s Favor”.

•     Show Title Slide “Worldly Wisdom Vs Godly Wisdom”

•     Worldly wisdom, because this trick with the rods of poplar and almond was not some kind of witchcraft or divination, it was not some cultish ritual or anything like that… it was the height of modern science, it was wordly wisdom… but if you have been a Christian for very long at all, you know that it is God who brings prosperity, not any kind of wordly wisdom or man’s shallow thinking… so let’s dive into it… with our first point this morning: Worldly Wisdom is a Source of Foolishness.

Worldly Wisdom is a Source of Foolishness

Genesis 30:37–40 NKJV

Now Jacob took for himself rods of green poplar and of the almond and chestnut trees, peeled white strips in them, and exposed the white which was in the rods. And the rods which he had peeled, he set before the flocks in the gutters, in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink, so that they should conceive when they came to drink. So the flocks conceived before the rods, and the flocks brought forth streaked, speckled, and spotted. Then Jacob separated the lambs, and made the flocks face toward the streaked and all the brown in the flock of Laban; but he put his own flocks by themselves and did not put them with Laban’s flock.

•     Okay okay okay… I am so excited to be able to demystify what is going on here, church… let’s break it down for a minute…

•     Jacob is going to work another six years for Laban, and at the end of those six years all the streaked, spotted, and speckled livestock will be his and the rest will be Laban’s.

•     But Laban, at the begging of the six years, stole all the streaked, speckled, and spotted livestock thinking that would mean that none of the future livestock, or at least very few of the future livestock would be streaked and speckled and spotted…

•     Jacob now seeing the dishonesty and theft of Laban has to do SOMETHING to make sure that at the end of this six years he has some livestock to take with him… so he comes up with this plan… he is going to to take branches or trees and cut stripes in the bark of those branches and lay them out in the feeding troughs of the livestock when the mate.

•     That would have looked something like this:

•     Show “Streaked Rods.png”

•     Now when the strong livestock were ready to uh… “get it on”… He would put out these rods… and when the weaker and feebler livestock were ready to mate he would remove the rods…

•     And what happened was that those livestock that mated in front of the rods would come fourth streaked and speckled and spotted, and those sheep that did the dead without the rods in front of them would come fourth without streaks and spots…

•     NOW SPOILER ALERT: The Rods had nothing to do with which livestock came fourth speckled in spotted… these rods where NOT a source of Prosperity… Jacob thought they were, but they weren’t… we will talk more about that in the next point…

•     But why did Jacob think these rods would do anything? What kind of wizardry was this?

•     Well he wasn’t delving into magic or divination at all… in fact, Jacob was employing the very pinnacle of modern science at the time.

•     This wasn’t witchcraft, this was the wisdom of the time, and it was called “Maternal Impression”.

•     Science at the time believed that whatever the mother was looking at during the time of conception would influence the physical traits of the child being concieved.

•     So if a mother conceived in the middle of the day looking at a bright room, the child was more likely to be light skinned, and if conceived in the dark the child was more likely to be dark skinned… It’s called “maternal impression” and it is what Science believed at the time… and if this were true then I most have been conceived at noon in July while my mom was staring at some blank paper… BUT OF COURSE THIS IS NOT TRUE.

•     This man’s wisdom, this wisdom of the time, this wordly wisdom is SO LUDICRUS that when we read it some 4000 years later our brains natural go to “Was this some kind of magic trick” instead of thinking “Oh, he was applying fertility science to the flock”.

•     You see Jacob’s wordly wisdom, now looking back, is incredibly stupid… it was a source of foolishness.

1 Corinthians 1:20 NKJV

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

•     Now it is easy to laugh at how foolish the science of the time was now, but I wonder how much of our current wordly wisdom will turn out to be foolish… I just think about the science that has been overturned in my lifetime…

•     When I had my appendix removed in 2004 I was told it was useless organ left over from evolution. It was a “Vestigial organ” they said…

•     But in 2007 researchers at Duke University Medical Center discovered that the appendix has a very specific and important purpose, it holds vital gut bacteria as an emergency reserve, so if sickness causes your system to lose it’s good bacteria the Apendix will replenish that good bacteria… it also is rich in lymphoid tissue helping support the immune system… NOT USELESS AT ALL.

•     What about this… How many planets are there in the Solar system? I was taught there was 9, but it turns out there is only 8… PLUTO IS A LIE!!!!!

•     Turns out Pluto is a rock that is three times SMALLER than our moon! The moon that we see in the sky, that NO ONE WOULD CALL A PLANET is THREE TIMES LARGER THAN PLUTO.

•     How about this one… What causes stomach ulcers? Stress and spicey food right? NOPE! Turns out it has nothing to do with stress or spicey food, it is caused by a bacteria… but the researchers who discovered that were heavily MOCKED by experts at the time until they definitely proved it and won the nobel peace prize.

•     And don’t get me started on the food pyramid or the tongues taste map… it is all nonsense…

•     And this is just stuff that has happened in my very short lifetime…

•     As time moves on, the wisdom of man continues to be a source of foolishness, not a source of prosperity… it continues to fail… 100 years from now, should the Lord tarry, people will look back in horror at abortion and the fact that some called it “healthcare”… the wisdom of our time has lead to some of the greatest horrors of mankind… and it turns out time and time again to be a source of foolishness.

•     But the wisdom of God continues to prove true.

•     3,500 years ago in the book of Leviticus God commanded “Wash your hands” after touching a sick person or a dead body!

•     But it wasn’t until the mid 1840’s that science caught up with that fact, before then doctors would handle a dead body, then go to the next room and treat someone suffering from a terrible disease, then go to the next room and deliver a baby…

•     in 1847, before doctors started washing their hands a mother had an 18.3% mortality rate when giving birth, a year later when hand washing became required that rate dropped to 1.2%…

•     From 18.3% death rate to 1.2% death rate… SIMPLY BY DOING WHAT GOD SAID TO DO 3,300 years earlier!

•     Man I could give thousands of examples like this, but I think you get the point!

•     THE WISDOM OF GOD PROVES TRUE!

•     SO WHEN IT COMES TO POSPERITY CHURCH… here is the application… WHY WOULD YOU LISTEN TO THE WORLD?!

•     And that tee’s up our final point this morning nicely, and the crux of this series… GOD IS THE TRUE SOURCE OF PROSPERITY!

God is the True Source of Prosperity

Genesis 31:10–13 NKJV

“And it happened, at the time when the flocks conceived, that I lifted my eyes and saw in a dream, and behold, the rams which leaped upon the flocks were streaked, speckled, and gray-spotted. Then the Angel of God spoke to me in a dream, saying, ‘Jacob.’ And I said, ‘Here I am.’ And He said, ‘Lift your eyes now and see, all the rams which leap on the flocks are streaked, speckled, and gray-spotted; for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar and where you made a vow to Me. Now arise, get out of this land, and return to the land of your family.’ ”

•     God, in a dream, reveals the true source of prosperity to Jacob… in fact, Jacob in this whole dialog makes it very plain…

Genesis 31:7–9 NKJV

Yet your father has deceived me and changed my wages ten times, but God did not allow him to hurt me. If he said thus: ‘The speckled shall be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore speckled. And if he said thus: ‘The streaked shall be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore streaked. So God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me.

•     God is the source of Jacob’s prosperity… not the Rods… FORGET THE RODS… it was GOD who took away Laban’s flock and gave them to Jacob…

•     The Rod’s were the wisdom of the world… but in the end, Jacob realizes it is God who is the true source of prosperity… It was because Jacob had the favor of His heavenly Father that he was prosperous…

•     Ultimately church, this should not be hard to accept or digest, but it seems hard for people to live out… ultimatly, the greatest takeaway from this series is simply that God is the source of our prosperity.

Deuteronomy 8:18 NKJV

“And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth…

1 Chronicles 29:12 NKJV

Both riches and honor come from You, And You reign over all.

Proverbs 10:22 NKJV

The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, And He adds no sorrow with it.

•     God is the source of our prosperity… ok, so we know this, we understand this… Jacob knows this and understands this… it was God who made the livestock come fourth streaked and speckled and spotted… not the rods, not the wisdom of the world… ok cool… so what’s the application?

•     Here is the application church… Walk in the wisdom of God, honor God in all your ways, trust Him, lean on Him and not your own understanding… this is how we find prosperity, we find it from the source and the source is GOD!

Proverbs 3:5–6 NKJV

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

•     God is going to direct your path, like GPS on your phone… but listen a GPS is not helpful if you don’t LISTEN TO IT.

•     God is the source of prosperity, we lean not on our own understanding but trust Him and He directs our paths, and if we follow His directions we will end up prosperous…

•     For the rest of your life you will have to decide… will you trust the world or will you trust God? Because they rarely agree… So let’s just talk about a few examples… I can’t give you every example in the Bible, I don’t have time… but here are a few…

•     The world says you need to leverage debt… the Bible says the borrower is slave to the lender.

Proverbs 22:7 NKJV

The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower is servant to the lender.

Romans 13:8 NKJV

Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.

•     Personally I would discourage you from taking on debt other than a mortgage and maybe a reasonable car loan… and even then you should be bathing that decision in prayer.

•     The world says you need to hold tightly to your money and hoard it to build wealth… the Bible says to tithe and give offerings, and to be generous to others…

Proverbs 11:24 NKJV

There is one who scatters, yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right, But it leads to poverty.

Malachi 3:10 NKJV

Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,” Says the Lord of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.

Luke 6:38 NKJV

Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

•     As your pastor let me encourage you… when God tells you to give, GIVE… when the Bible says give… GIVE… when you pledge to give… GIVE… Always listen to the Spirit, sometimes the Spirit says “don’t give”, but let that be God’s decision…

•     When I was growing up, and many in my generation and generations before me believed that you need to earn as much money as you can. The wisdom of the World taught that you should take as many hours as you can, take as many promotions as you can, and earn as much money as you can… but the bible teaches that the Father is much more than the bread winner and needs to be home with his wife and kids, taking at least one day off a week, and spending time poring into his family.

Proverbs 23:4 NKJV

Do not overwork to be rich; Because of your own understanding, cease!

Proverbs 15:27 NKJV

He who is greedy for gain troubles his own house…

•     How many times have I counseled men who have brought trouble to their own houses by taking a well paying job that took them away from their church and families…

•     Now that was the wisdom of my time that said you should work as hard as you can to earn as much as you can… but it seems like the wisdom of the world has changed it’s tune and is now saying “Get rich quick! Don’t work hard! Be your own boss! You can earn your living as an influencer!” this is also foolishness. The Bible says you MUST work and provide for your family.

Proverbs 28:19–20 NKJV

He who tills his land will have plenty of bread, But he who follows frivolity will have poverty enough! A faithful man will abound with blessings, But he who hastens to be rich  will not go unpunished.

1 Timothy 5:8 NKJV

But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 NKJV

For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.

•     Again I could go on and on with verses about how to be prosperous, but you need to study the scriptures for yourself church… but can you at LEAST today make a commitment, I am going to honor God’s word above wordly wisdom when seeking prosperity? Can we agree to that?

•     If we can agree to that, then I think we will become more and more prosperous as a church body, more and more prosperous as families, and more and more prosperous as individuals, as children of God… again, not Air-Conditioned dog house prosperous… but God takes care of His people prosperous… amen? Alright, let’s conclude this message this morning.

Conclusion

•     You know as I conclude this message I want to look at the words of Laban’s sons, from the first verse in chapter 31… because I think the recap this sermon and the last pretty well…

Genesis 31:1 NKJV

Now Jacob heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, “Jacob has taken away all that was our father’s, and from what was our father’s he has acquired all this wealth.”

•     Now Laban’s sons were wrong… Jacob had not taken away all that was their fathers… God had done that… the consequences of his sin of theft and dishonesty had done that…

•     But it highlights the contrast between Jacob and Laban at the point of Jacob’s parting… Jacob leaves wealthy… Laban is left in poverty…

•     And it all comes down to the favor and the blessings of God being on Jacob, and the curse that Laban brought on himself by lying and stealing…

•     Can we learn from Laban’s folly? Can we find favor like Jacob found favor? I think we can, and honestly I have lived a life of favor and prosperity, I talked about it last week… my life of prosperity started when I gave my life to Jesus… and it will never end… I will live in the prosperity and goodness of God for eternity, first here on earth, and then forever in glory… and I understand that God does not promise us fiscal prosperity at all times in all things, we live in a fallen world, full of evil and persecution… but I would rather be persecuted and locked up with Christ, than free and foolish away from Him, amen? We will talk more about that next week, for this week let’s finish as we always do by inviting people to come to Jesus.