Finding You True Love

Love makes you do some crazy things doesn’t it? I have heard some wild stories of what some people have done in the name of love. I heard of one poor guy who fell in love and shortly after he began dating this girl her brother fell ill in the hospital. He ended up needing a kidney transplant. So, naturally, to impress her he donated his kidney.

Upon the conclusion of this surgery he found out that this guy was actually not her brother, but an ex-boyfriend whom she was still in love with. Shortly after the operation she broke up with her kidney donating boyfriend to marry her fake brother. Love makes you do wild things sometimes. Well, the Bible is no exception. We will be covering a large swath of scripture for this so keep your Bible open and ready as we move along through this one.

In Genesis 25 we are introduced to two twins: Jacob and Esau. Jacob ends up going to his Uncle Laban’s house and meets his beautiful daughter Rachel. On to the weird, Jacob discovers that Rachel is his first cousin. Yes, I said first. Now before we run out all of the Alabama marry your first cousin jokes… ok, go ahead. Weird right?! Well apparently, in ancient near eastern culture this was a big yes for potential suitors. And Jacob signs up for 7 years of working for his uncle, which leads me to my first point:

Love is blind

Rachel is described as beautiful in her face and form. This is Jewish for, she was an attractive girl. No need for a Hebrew degree here, it is pretty straightforward what the author of Genesis is intending to say.

Now, we also have Leah. The narrator is not subtle in his description here. She had “weak eyes but Rachel was beautiful in face and figure.” Scholars aren’t sure what “weak eyes” means but we know it doesn’t mean she is nearsighted. We know this because she is put in contrast with Rachel in this sentence. It doesn’t say she had weak eyes but Rachel could see far.

It actually means that her eyes were messed up in how they looked. How do I put this delicately, it probably meant when she was facing east one of her eyes were monitoring things up North… is that clear enough? The other way the author shows she isn’t attractive is that her name literally means cow. “Well Pastor, maybe that meant something else in that culture?” Nope. It doesn’t matter what culture you come from, if you get called a cow it’s not a good thing.

So, let’s get back on track here, 7 years of labor was an exorbitant price. The typical dowry was 30-40 shekels. He offered essentially 4 times that amount (about 130 shekels in wages). The girls in here might think, “aww how sweet.” Don’t miss the point. The point is this: Jacob is obsessed. He is willing to do anything to get this girl.

Where have you looked for love blindly and ended up getting hurt? It is usually in a relationship, but it might not even be in that. It could be in an object, or a goal, or a job. Love, for a person, a career, or object, outside of Jesus blinds us, and it hurts us.

“They seemed like days to him because of his love for her.” Aww… said the girls. Wrong again. The author is trying to show you that Jacob is obsessed and blinded by his affection for a person instead of his affections for God. Jacob finds himself in a mess because he serves and follows his emotions and his idols more closely than his God. His affections for Rachel far outweighed his affections for God. God was Jacob’s means to an end, a way to Rachel. How about you? What in your life has blinded you to your love for God?

Love outside of Christ falls short

I hate to be crass here but it is Jacob who said it and it is my job to let the Bible speak for itself. “Give me my wife that I may go into her” is as crass and disrespectful as it sounds. One of my favorite Old Testament scholars Robert Altar says this: “It is uncharacteristically crass and crude that ancient narrators never put that kind of stuff in a narrative. The fact that he puts it in there is the author trying to show some of the vulgarity of what is going on in Jacob’s mind.” All of a sudden all of the “aww Jacob, what a heartthrob” girls are silent…

Jacob does what a lot of people who deal with deep disappointment in life do. They search for their answer to life’s problems in finding that one true romantic love. Someone that will fulfill them, give them meaning, will make their life worth living.

Most guys are drowning in a sea of loneliness and despair with low self-esteem. What happens is a 5 foot 2 beautiful looking life preserver floats by and they do what any drowning man would do with a life preserver: he clings to it for dear life. What he will end up doing is suffocating the life out of her because he’s looking for something in her that she was never designed to give to him. Lonely, despairing, low self-esteem single people end up being lonely, despairing, low self-esteem married people. You need God for this, nothing and nobody else.

So how does he not catch that it’s Leah? Well, she would have worn a veil that covered her head and face which was tradition at the time. He probably would have celebrated pretty hard with the booze after the ceremony, and then taken her to bed in the dark. “And behold, there was Leah.” Behold INDEED!

When he argues with Laban why doesn’t he fight back? I actually think it is because the exact term is used in Hebrew for the term he used to deceive his father Isaac. Jacob is haunted by his own actions and sees them occurring right in front of him. Just as Isaac reached out in the dark to touch Esau and was fooled, Jacob reached out in the dark to touch Rachel but was fooled. He has to give Laban another 7 years for his error. He got Rachel on credit apparently, and Leah on layaway.

Love, outside of Christ, cannot fulfill like Christ can. If we do it our way, and we live according to our wisdom, we will lose. Jacob deceived, and was deceived. Jacob was caught up in lust, and was tricked and dealt with the consequences.

In what areas of your life, have you allowed space for the enemy to do the very same thing? What have you put ahead of Christ and experienced consequences as a result of your decision?

Broken love leaves broken people

I hate this for Leah. All her life she lives in her sister’s shadow and the only way she can get married is by her deadbeat dad lying and manipulating a guy and getting her to marry him in a drunk stupor in the dark. And now, we have a sister wives situation with television show level jealousy and contention. Now the narrative switches to Leah.

Leah thinks with Reuben that Jacob will see that she produced a son. “Look at the value I can bring!” She has a second son which means “heard”, assuming the Lord has heard and maybe Jacob will love me now. Does it work? Well, she has a third son which means “attached”, maybe he will be attached to me with producing 3 sons.

Leah is putting her confidence in what she can produce. How true is this of us? Maybe that romance didn’t work out, let me try another one. Maybe another one. Maybe I can do this to be valuable, maybe I can earn love and acceptance. Not in this job, but if I get another job I will feel complete and happy. We are just like Leah.

But verse 35 we finally get the gospel, “And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the LORD.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.”

Where is Jesus in this? Well, there are two ways to write God’s name in Genesis. One way, Elohim which means “God the creator”. It is spelled GOD in your English Bible. The other way, is Yahweh or Jehovah. It is spelled LORD in all capital letters. Yahweh, or Jehovah is God’s covenant name. He is the God, the promise who gave himself to Abraham and said, I will always be with you, I will always bless you, give you salvation, and be your God.

This name Yahweh, it is only for people who have entered into that covenant. Don’t miss this. She says praise be to Yahweh, which means that she is now finding her joy in God’s covenant with her and not in her ability to have sons.

Leah stopped trying to earn the love of Jacob through having sons and received the love of God given to her as a gift and that became the source of her joy and the source of her praise in life.

Want to know something even more cool? Judah would grow up to be the ancestor of a very important great, great, great, great grandchild… Jesus. Jesus will be referred to as the lion of the tribe of Judah! This would be the son through whom Jesus Christ himself would come. Leah’s lineage became beautiful! Not because she had some physical beauty to pass on to them, but because God gave beauty as a gift in giving Jesus.

Conclusion

This all culminates to the main point today: Jesus is the true love you are desperately searching for. To look outside of him, in any capacity, is to sell yourself short.

3 ways the gospel is found in this story today.

1. In all of our searching, we are searching for Jesus

Jacob will pay whatever price for sex and companionship, Leah thinks she will be fulfilled through having a family. They are both serving idols. One of the Hebrew words for worship is Kabad, which means weight. It is saying that you give something worship when you give it weight in your life. When there is something in your life that has become so much weight that you can’t live without it.

Idols are often good things! Sex, marriage, kids, success, etc. But my question to you is, have you placed good things in the category of God things. Does it hold the weight that Jesus should hold in your heart? All idols disappoint because you were made for God! All of our pursuits can be found in the glory of his presence. That is why St. Augustine famously said, “our hearts will always be restless until we have found our rest in God.

2. God gives his blessing to those who receive it in faith, not to those who strive

Only when you stop trying to earn God’s and over people’s love can you be free. Jacob chose Rachel because she was naturally good looking, but God chose Leah to bear the messiah’s lineage. Isaac chose Esau because he fit the definition of what he wanted his son to be, but God chose Jacob to be the one through whom the ultimate man will one day come. It comes by grace alone.

Paul confirms this in Titus 3:5, “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.” It is by grace we have been saved, through faith. Not our works. Not to have sons, look beautiful, or be gifted. Only by grace, only through faith.

3. God didn’t love us because we were beautiful, we become beautiful because he loves us

Leah’s lineage and her story is beautiful because of God, nothing else. God didn’t look throughout the earth for the talented and the beautiful, God’s love creates that which is lovely. He makes the unlovely, lovable. God has set his love on you unconditionally, not because of what you’ve done, but simply because of being made in his image.

His unconditional love is not because of your behavior but is a gift in Christ. One day, he is going to make your outside match the beauty of the Christ he has placed on the inside. How do I know? 1 John 3:1-2, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

Live for him, your true love. The one you were made for, the one place you can be fulfilled and truly free.