Jacob No.5 The Wheeler Dealer

Genesis, chapter 30. Joseph has been born to Rachel. Rachel is the favoured wife of Jacob.

Jacob is having a bit of difficulty with relatives, so this reading is up to date, and we break into the story. His relative's name is Laban. After Rachel, Genesis 30, 25, after Rachel gave birth to Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, send me on my way so that I can go back to my own homeland.

Give me my wives and children for whom I have served you, and I will be on my way. You know how much work I've done for you. But Laban said to him, if I have found favour in your eyes, please stay.

I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. He added, name your wages and I will pay them. Jacob said to him, you know how I have worked for you, and how your livestock has fared under my care.

The little you had before I came has increased greatly, and the Lord has blessed you wherever I have been. But now, when may I do something for my own household? What shall I give you? Laban asked. Don't give me anything, Jacob replied, but if you will do me this one thing, if you will do this one thing for me, I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them.

Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-coloured lamb, and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages, and my honesty will testify for me in the future. Whenever you check on the wages you have paid me, any goat in my possession that is not speckled or spotted, or any lamb that is not dark-coloured, will be considered stolen.

Agreed, said Laban. Let it be as you have said. That same day he removed all the male goats that were streaked or spotted, and all the speckled or spotted goats, all that had white on them, and all the dark-coloured lambs, and he placed them in the care of his sons.

Then he put a three-day journey between himself and Jacob, while Jacob continued to tend the rest of Laban's flocks. Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond, and plain trees, and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink.

When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches, and they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. Jacob set apart the young of the flock themselves, but made the rest face the streaked and dark-coloured animals that belonged to Laban. Thus he made separate flocks for himself, and did not put them with Laban's animals.

Whenever the stronger females were in heat, Jacob would place the branches in the troughs in front of the animals, so that they would mate near the branches. But if the animals were weak, he would not place them there. So the weak animals went to Laban, and the strong ones to Jacob.

In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous, and came to own large flocks and maidservants and maidservants and camels and donkeys. Jacob heard that Laban's sons were saying, Jacob has taken everything our father owned and has gained all this wealth from what belonged to our father. And Jacob noticed that Laban's attitude towards him was not what it had been.

Then the Lord said to Jacob, Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you. So then in summary, Jacob sends for his wives, explains to them that they are to pack their bags and get ready to move on, indeed to move out. Verse 17, Then Jacob put his children and his wives on camels, and he drove all his livestock ahead of him, along with all the goods he had accumulated in Paddan Aram, to go to his father Isaac in the land of Canaan.

When Laban had gone to shear his sheep, Rachel stole her father's household goods. Moreover, Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him he was running away. So he fled with all he had, and crossing the river he headed for the hill country of Gilead.

On the third day Laban was told that Jacob had fled. Taking his relatives with him, he pursued Jacob for seven days and caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead. Then God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream at night and said to him, Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.

Jacob had pitched his tent in the hill country of Gilead when Laban overtook him, and Laban and his relatives camped there too. Then Laban said to Jacob, What have you done? You've deceived me. You've carried off my daughters like the captives in war.

Why did you run off secretly and deceive me? Why didn't you tell me so that I could send you away with joy and singing to the music of tambourines and harps? You didn't even let me kiss my grandchildren and my daughters goodbye. You have done a foolish thing. I have the power to harm you, but last night the God of your father said to me, Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.

And now you have gone off because you long to return to your father's house. But why did you steal my gods? So there's a search in Jacob's camp. The search proves fruitless, though actually Rachel had swiped for God images, but Jacob didn't know that.

Later, Laban and Jacob decide to make an agreement. Verse 45. So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar.

He said to his relatives, Gather some stones. So they took stones and piled them in a heap and they ate there by the heap. Laban called it Jigah Sahaduthah and Jacob called it Galid.

Laban said, This heap is a witness between you and me today. That is why it is called Galid. It was also called Mizpah because he said, May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other.

Verse 54. Jacob offered a sacrifice there in the hill country and invited his relatives to a meal. After they had eaten, they spent the night there.

I've never had the privilege of viewing the program, at least not fully, but I understand that either the BBC or ITV treats us in one of its more cultural offerings to a character by the name of Arthur Daly, who I believe is the world's best lovable con man. Have I got the right name? Some of you have just revealed yourselves. I saw a car of a friend of mine the other day and it had got something about Arthur Daly on the back window, along with various other flags and motifs.

Strikingly, right at the bottom of this collection of motifs and flags was a statement, The Lord is my shepherd. And the first thing that struck me was the incongruity of reference to a con man and then reference to the Lord as shepherd. In one sense, I'm very grateful to my friend that it stimulated my thinking because, although in this instance, obviously, there's a joke intended, there is a sense in which the con man and the aspiration, The Lord is my shepherd, converge in the character of Jacob.

I'm told that some people don't like the tab because we're a collection of middle-class successful people. Some smile because they know that that is not a description that fits them. There's only one adequate description of Worthing Tab.

It is a fellowship of failed people. We're here because we do need a crutch. We're unashamed to say that, but the crutch is not something of our own making.

The crutch is better defined as the gospel of Jesus Christ and the extension of God's help towards people like you and me. And there is a sense that when you look into the Old Testament character of Jacob, you see yourself. Whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them.

That is the golden rule. Be not deceived, says the Apostle Paul, quoting the Old Testament, but writing to a church like ours only in a place called Galatia, be not deceived, God is not mocked. What a man reaps, or rather what a man sows, that he will also reap.

You know, those principles taught by our Lord, taught in the Old Testament, and reemphasized by the Apostle Paul, they actually were at work in the character, in the experience of Jacob. And what is more, whether you believe it or not, those principles are at work in the story of your life. God is not mocked.

What you sow, you will reap, and there is a sense in which the way that you deal with others, they in turn will deal with you. So here is Jacob, who's deceived his father, who has screwed his brothers into getting the best possible bargain that he can out of his older brother, slightly older, they were twins, and it's this corkscrew sort of personality that hovers on the page of Genesis as we look into it right now. Sometimes God shows you what you're like by the people that he brings into your life.

Your friends can be almost like gazing into a pond when it's still, and you see yourself. Sometimes God likes, let's come into your life some people who can be perfectly annoying and goad you, like Peniner, who happened to be the, share the same household as Hannah in the story of Samuel, you remember. Well here is Jacob, and he needs to see himself.

He needs to see someone whose trickery, whose ability in the art of deception is equal to and perhaps surpassing his own, so that one day at the butt end of the treatment that he has given to others, which he now is receiving from another, he can know what it feels like to have, the colloquial expression is, a taste of his own medicine. Oh the gift that thou wouldst gie us to see ourselves as others see us. So Jacob, fugitive Jacob, has found himself in the territory with which he was unfamiliar, but at this stage in the story has become more at home in, where Uncle Laban is the influential man and where Jacob now is the husband of his two daughters.

And what you find in Laban is that sort of man who can out Jacob a Jacob. He is the Arthur Daly of the Old Testament, and if you want him as a neighbor, God bless you. Daly, Laban, pulls a fast one on Jacob.

He finds that he marries Leah and not Rachel. How he made that mistake, I do not know. I've looked at that incident in Scripture from every angle, upside down, canonic, back to front, but I can't work that one out, but I take it because that's what Scripture says.

Leah, incidentally, stands as an illustration of those many, many womenfolk who sometimes go through a world unloved, for whom the glossy picture on women's magazines and increasingly on Christian women's magazines causes them to look by comparison at themselves and they find that their teeth are not even and their nose is not straight and they do not have the compelling looks nor the seductive figure of a Rachel. And thank God that the story of Leah is inscripturated, written down here, because it tells you that however badly she was dealt with by her father and indeed by her husband, God loved her. From the womb of this woman came princes and priests.

Laban dealt treacherously with Jacob. Here's an interesting guy, wasn't he? The fellow who flew to Cyprus with Nadir, a pilot from his, somewhere near where Nadir here was living in the UK. I suppose that his nest was well feathered with money that Nadir's got stashed up in Cyprus.

But do you know what he said when he was interviewed by the BBC? Because he can't come back to the UK and as much as he's an accomplice, he's enabled this ex-controller of Polly Peck to jump out of the way of British justice. He said to the BBC interviewer, I have disciplined myself never to think about the past. I'd like to tell that man that God has not so disciplined himself.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked. One day the whole picture will be represented of our lives with all its ugliness, with all its treachery. But the thing that God doesn't want, ideally, is for you to face him in that condition with unconfessed sin.

And so he will show you how he can treat Jacob and through the unpleasantness of Laban start to bring sensitivity to the spiritual demeanour of Jacob. Jacob's been working for his uncle for quite some time. Verse 25, 26 of the 30th chapter gives the context.

It's about time for Jacob, or so he feels, to go back to the land where he came from. Give me my wives, verse 26, and children for whom I've served you, and I will be on my way. You know how much work I've done for you.

Laban in true Arthur Daly fashion says, OK, name your wages and I will pay them. If you believe that, you'll believe anything. And Jacob didn't believe him.

So Jacob and Laban do a deal. It's an interesting deal. It has to do with sheep and goats and perhaps tested me in my Bible reading a few moments ago more than most passages of Scripture.

You try to get through all those adjectives time and time again about the speckled goats and sheep and white stripes and what have you. The drift of it is actually not terribly important in the detail. It's the principle that Jacob is going to outwit Laban.

And Laban is going to outwit Jacob. I think it's F.B. Meyer who speaks of the uncle Laban chuckling over his bargain and Jacob laughing up his sleeve because he has a plan of winning himself a great advantage. Jacob will have the striped animals, the dark-skinned animals.

Laban will have the others. And while Jacob's not looking, Laban nips in and whips out all the ones that belong to Jacob and pushes them three days' march away. And Jacob, true to the custom of his day or the belief in his day, thinks that when he displays striped rods at breeding time, that the vivid sign at conception or pregnancy would leave its mark upon the embryo.

Well, again, if you believe that, you'll believe anything too. But there is the intervention of God. And one of the things that you've got to learn from Jacob is this, that when God has revealed himself to you and said that he will be your God and that he will get you through life, he does not need you to tinker around with his sovereignty.

Let me give you some advice. Tim gave some advice to the younger folks here last Sunday night, very feelingfully put. Now it's not that I'm older than Tim.

As the Reader's Digest puts it, I'm just phenomenologically better gifted. Here is what you should not do in terms of business practice. You see, you can imagine closing up on Jacob as he's connived to outdo Laban.

But Jacob knows, because he's had the voice of God speak to him in this fashion, that he will look after him. He will see that all things in his life will work out, eventually achieving the divine good. But Jacob, hardened businessman, you can hear him in the city today.

You must meet a man on his own grounds. Maxwell gives 30,000 to the Labour Party. Why shouldn't Nadir give 400,000 to the Tories? And a Hong Kong businessman donate a million.

You see, it's a Jacob syndrome. You look at Laban and you do what Laban does. Business is business, isn't it? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Do as you would be done by. It's not a philosophy that you can take to the stock exchange. It's not a philosophy that you can take to ordinary business practice here in Worthing or Sussex.

Yes, do not steal, but don't get too particular about the bits and pieces around the office and the time that I sometimes squander that really belongs to my employer. Here is Jacob and he's doing what the other shepherds do. They filch on the side too.

They've got their own flocks building up. Why shouldn't he do the same? As in Caldea, do what the Caldeans do. I mean, after all, if you're a missionary and you're working in Zaire, or northern countries in Africa, north of that, if you don't go into the black market syndicate, if you don't use bribes, then the possibility is that the decisions required on you getting into that country will not be taken as quickly as they might have been.

So where's your theology? Or is it more the philosophy of the Arthur Dalys? You see, Jacob, one day he's going to be a prince with God. Ultimately into our world will come the prince of peace. And Jesus will never do what some of us do almost day by day.

He will never submerge himself into the ethic of the world, because he's not a worldling. He's a man who is founding a kingdom. And the anticipation of that kingdom is in the Old Testament.

The God of Bethel has appeared to Jacob. Jacob, I will be with you. As you go into the unknown territory where your uncle is, remember this, in my faithfulness, I pledge myself to take you there and to get you out.

I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. You do not need to sink to the chicanery of the business practices.

And neither do Christian people in Worthing, and indeed, hear me, in England itself, neither do they need to submit to the low ethics that there is in secular society. For above all this is our sovereign God, who works out his purposes, and we do not need to tinker to help God out of a mess, because he's never got himself into one. Well, Jacob gets rich.

Verse 43, chapter 30. In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous. You couldn't cross out the T, though, and say, in his way, and make the pronoun there refer to God Almighty.

God in his sovereignty sometimes overarches human treachery and mistakes. But Jacob was going in this way. Not in the way of God.

God in Jacob's own way. The man grew exceedingly prosperous, and came to own large flocks, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and donkeys. But, Jacob, did you not know that you could have had all this and more without breaking business conduct codes and lowering your own ethical standards? Moving to the first verse of the 31st chapter.

Six years have elapsed, actually, in which Jacob has worked further for Laban, and this deal has been done, though Laban's tried to outmaneuver Jacob on several occasions, changing his wages, changing the stakes, wanting Jacob's sheep, and Jacob having Laban's colored sheep. And Jacob knows that the time has come for him to leave. Jacob heard that Laban's sons were saying, Jacob has taken everything our father owned, has gained all this wealth from what belonged to our father.

Jacob noticed that Laban's attitude towards him was not what it had been. Then, then the Lord said to Jacob, Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you. There is a time for you to move.

There is a time for you to get out of the compromise of Padam Adam. When the nailed, pierced hands of Jesus disturb your nest and start to break it bit by bit, that's the time for you to move. To move out of the compromise of the life that you have lived to that point.

To go back or to go forward to the fresh and pure air where in Jacob's case he was brought up. Go back and I will be with you. Now that's where I'm in trouble.

Not in trouble as far as Jacob is concerned, because I see myself so often as Jacob. This is where my theology is utterly dependent on the truthfulness of Scripture, because for God to be with Jacob is like God saying, I will be with Arthur Daly. And the fact of the matter is, there is a connection.

This God is able to deal with the twisted people who in treachery have exploited others. This God is able to enter into a relationship with them, but not on the basis of their treachery. What God wants to do with Jacob is what God wants to do with you and me.

And it's the persistency of God and the faithfulness of God and the patience of God which has stuttered our congregational singing to this point, which actually placards it in front of you in summary fashion. In His faithfulness, in His patience, twenty-odd years have gone by and God will still speak to Jacob, and I'm amazed at God. And I'm amazed that He deals with me when I wouldn't deal with me like that if I was Him.

In one sense, it's not easy to get out of padam adam. It's not easy to get out of the psychological mold in which you've allowed yourself to be formed or to set. And what I see besides the historical narrative of Jacob convincing his wife using canton and truth, merging the two, and persuading them to be ready to go with him and to cross the Euphrates and to make their way back to the now more attractive territory from where he came, I see also the man who has been confronted with the classic gospel of Jesus Christ, who knows, as we were told so forcefully in our address this morning, that he cannot compromise with padam adam.

He cannot live there comfortably. He's got to get out. It's a pity that the point of departure, Jacob, wasn't even courageous enough to tell the truth.

He should have gone to Laban and said, I'm going. It's perfectly honorable for him to go. I mean, even the historian has to slip in the comment, which is most unusual in the narrative in Genesis, as far as I can recall, which passes an evaluation on the character of Jacob.

Verse 20, Moreover, Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him he was running away. Should such a man as Jacob flee without saying what he was doing? But he does go. I commend him for going, but not for the mode of his departure.

After all, it's not easy to leave padam adam. Seven days elapses, and Laban is now literally, as well as physically, in striking distance of Jacob. On the third day, verse 22, Laban was told that Jacob had fled, taking his relatives with him.

He pursued Jacob for seven days and caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead. And Laban now tries to convince Jacob that it would be better for him to return to padam adam. Why can't you be content to stay where you were? You could have practiced your religion.

We could have done a merge between my beliefs and your beliefs. Why did you run off so secretly, verse 27, and deceive me? Why didn't you tell me so that I could send you away with joy and singing to the music of tambourines and harps? Arthur Daly's overdoing it there a bit, I think. You're cruel.

You didn't even let me kiss my grandchildren and daughters goodbye. He threatens, I have the power to harm you. My friend, to leave padam adam, do you understand me? To leave secular society, to live differently is difficult.

And sometimes your closest friend will say, why are you treating me as you are? It used to be alright until you had your Bethel. They didn't use that expression, but you know. It was alright until you came to Jesus Christ, alright until somebody explained the gospel.

Now you've turned religious. You don't want to live in the way that you used to live. And we're threatening very often with connivance.

And sometimes with blackmail, they endeavor to hook you back into the society from which you have emerged and to which you do not want to return. It's not easy when you've been confronted with the gospel of Christ. And know full well that embracing it means that you have to live differently.

It is not easy for you so to do. It takes a miracle of Lazarus proportions for a 16-year-old, an 18-year-old, a 20-year-old to stand for Jesus in a world where only 4% of their age group ever attends church on a regular basis. To live a clear-cut, clean life for Jesus Christ, it takes a miracle.

And some of us older people, we ought to be more sensitive and more on our knees for these younger folks who live in the hostility of Paddan Aram at a time when things are so rough. And it wasn't as bad in our day. And when you leave, when you become a Christian, when you've had done with all the wheelings and all the dealings, you need to ensure that you've left properly and cleanly, taking nothing with you, nor being with those who have secreted from Paddan Aram that which will be offensive and unhelpful to her and to you.

I refer to Rachel trying to smuggle out one of her father's guts. We need to have our lives cleared of the accursed things, a clean cut from the religious pollution and the compromised ethic of Paddan Aram. Do you know what happened as we come to the conclusion of this address? As ultimately Jacob and Laban take their leave of one another, Jacob does something very significant.

He has now calmed his uncle and he's going to leave Jacob in a more peaceful fashion than which Jacob left Esau. And so what they did is this, verse 46. They set up a pillar of stones and they both covenanted that neither would harm the other or penetrate the other's territory.

Verse 46, he said to his relatives, gather some stones. So they took stones and piled them in a heap and they ate there by the heap. Laban called it Jager Sarhadutha and Jacob called it Galid.

Galid means a witness heap. Another word was Misbah. They made a covenant.

Jacob witnessed to Laban certain things. And it is necessary when you leave Paddan Aram, as you become a Christian, for you to go to a place where there can be a witness heap. On the cross of Calvary our Lord Jesus Christ died for you and for me.

It is the point where God deals with repentant sinners. It is the witness between God and man that there is a way for man to rise to that sublime abode. An offering and a sacrifice, a Holy Spirit's energy, an advocate with God.

You cannot be a Christian without a Galid. Without saying this is the pile of stones that witnesses the fact that I have given my heart to God and said that I will follow him and serve him and live for him and for his glory and not be content with life in Paddan Aram. Before Jacob and Laban finally separated, they had a meal.

For in the culture of that day, after a covenant had been made, there would be a sacramental meal which would firm up the promises that each had taken to the other, with the other. And this morning we came to our Galid and two or three hundred people in this sanctuary received bread and wine. The sacramental meal that reminds us of our Galid, of the place where Jesus died on the cross of Calvary for us.

And we went on to say, in effect, we are continuing to live a life that is dedicated to the honor and to the praise of this God. Now I ask you, have you done something like that? God can take the wheeler and the dealer. He can take a man as ruthless or even more ruthless than Laban.

To quote Isaiah, he'll call a worm his friend. This is the nature of God, the Father. This is the heart of the Lord Jesus, the Son.

This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit, to seek out the Jacobs in this world, these men, these women, who perhaps for years have run away from him, and to bring them to their senses, to show them something of the ugliness of Padam Aram, the bestiality of humanity. And to show that in the very picture they have a reflection of themselves, until they become so disgusted with themselves, that they plead for forgiveness and for cleansing, for regeneration. In a word, to be born again.

You say you're not good enough. That's the qualification we want. Not the righteous, not the righteous.

Jesus has come to redeem sinners, failures. The Arthur dailies, he will become their shepherd. Amazing grace, that saves a wretch like me.

Let's bow our heads in prayer. Not so easy, Lord, for us to cut clean of the old way of life. Where we've wheeled and dealed, and where in some measure perhaps we've become comfortable.

Where we've compromised and done the things we ought not to have done, and left undone the things we ought to have done, and we know that there's nothing good in us. But we praise you that you do seek us. You coax us out of Padam, and eventually you show us yourself again in all your greatness and all your grandeur.

You call a worm your friend. Oh God, break into our hearts, and get from us the commitment that you deserve, and we ought gladly to give you. Let's stand and sing Amazing Grace 31.

It was grace that taught my heart to fear. Grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. The rain that taught me how to see had begun again. In many days he saved us all, and raised the living God.

And living now for ten thousand years, and shining as the sun, we know there's days to see us praise, and then we must give amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. How precious the sound that saved a wretch like me.