Genesis 29 | “Accepting the Rejected”

Sunday morning sermon audio from Preston Highlands Baptist Church.

What Kind of People Does God Work With?

What kind of people do you like to work with?  We usually like to work with people who’re capable, intelligent, and likeable.  We like to work with people who seem to be on their way up, not on their way down.  We like to work with the strong, not the weak.

It’s natural to want to work with competent people.  But we must guard ourselves from assuming that those with cognitive or physical abilities that are different than us are therefore less than us.

To illustrate this point, Kelly Kapic, in his excellent book You’re Only Human, asks this question: “When we engage those who have Down syndrome, do we imagine we are the only one bringing something of value to the relationship, or can we learn from them?”[1]  He talks about how we value people who’re intellectually quick and fail to appreciate those who force us to slow down.  He says, “It is not difficult to see how easily we have imposed a scale of ‘being efficient’ onto our perception of ‘being human,’ consequently valuing people in terms of productivity and speed.”[2]  This kind of mindset is why many of us, perhaps unconsciously, avoid or ignore those with disabilities.  But Jesus, of course, moved toward the blind, the deaf, and the lame.

Whether we have specific disabilities or not, I think many of us often feel guilty or ashamed that we don’t know enough, aren’t smart enough, aren’t physically strong enough, aren’t attractive enough, or that our willpower fluctuates in relation to our blood sugar.

But what if God actually prefers to work with people who didn’t get picked first on the playground, or score the highest on the ACT, or struggle with deep insecurities and fears?  What if God prefers to work with the weak and despised over the strong and successful?  What if God actually prefers to accept those who’ve been rejected?

The Lord Accepts the Rejected

In Genesis 29, we’re going to see Jacob get a taste of his own medicine, as he’s deceived into marrying two sisters, Leah and Rachel.  Next week we’ll see the effects of this terrible arrangement.  But this week we’ll see that, though God’s plan isn’t the one Jacob would’ve chosen, it is the one that demonstrates God’s desire to accept the rejected.

The main point of this text and this sermon is that the Lord accepts the rejected one.   In verses 1-14, Jacob meets Rachel.  In verses 15-30, Laban deceives Jacob.  And in verses 31-35, the Lord sees Leah.  In this chapter, Laban’s scheming and Jacob’s neglecting are set in contrast with the Lord accepting the rejected.

Jacob Meets Rachel

In verses 1-14, Jacob meets Rachel.  This story reminds us of when Abraham’s servant meets Rebekah at a well in chapter 24.  There are lots of similarities.  There’s a journey to a distant land, an arrival at a well, a girl who’s a cousin of the groom to be comes to draw water from the well, water is drawn, the girl returns home and reports what happened to her family, the traveler is brought to the girl’s house, and a marriage eventually happens between the man looking for a wife and the girl met at the well.

But there’s a major difference between this account of Jacob and Rachel and the chapter 24 account of Abraham’s servant meeting Rebekah.  Throughout chapter 24, Abraham’s servant prays to God and praises God.  Here in chapter 29, Jacob does neither.

The servant is prayerful, Jacob is prayerless.  The servant acts on the basis of faith and prayer.  Jacob acts on the basis of physical attraction and personal strength.

The Value of Process

Has Jacob surrendered his life to God?  The vow of 28:20-22 suggests so, but his is a faith that’s still growing and developing.  At the end of 28, he’s worshipping and making promises about giving a tenth of all he had to God.  But here he’s a man still characterized by action and scheming than he is by obvious and outward trust in the Lord.

Jacob is a man in process.  God isn’t done with him yet.  He is slowly, but surely, molding him into the servant leader of his people.  In just a few more chapters he’ll have his full attention.

We don’t like slow processes, but God loves them!  God values processes not just finished products.  He created the universe in six days when he could’ve done it in a millisecond.  He’s changing his people “from one degree of glory to another” through the lifelong process of sanctification (2 Cor. 3:18).

We don’t like processes because they’re slow and we’re always in a hurry.  We prefer rapid download speeds, fast food, and instant gratification.  But God is not in a hurry.  He prefers the crockpot of slow and steady growth over the microwave of quick fixes.

Sin and shame tempt us to give up.  But, brothers and sisters, we must never give up!  In and through our struggle, God is brewing and building something beautiful.

God Is Working Behind the Scenes

Just because Jacob doesn’t ask for or acknowledge God’s help when he gets to this well, narrator Moses makes it clear that God is behind what’s happening here.  One of the things Moses wants us to see is the size of this stone that covers the well.  He says in verse 2, “The stone on the well’s mouth was large.”  In verse 3, he says that it took all the shepherds to move the stone.  The shepherds confirm this in verse 8.  Wells were often covered with large stones to keep the well clean and keep people from accidentally falling into them.  The size of this stone tells us that it was restricted to use by a group of shepherds, as it took several of them to move it.

So when Jacob single-handedly moves the stone in verse 10, we’re meant to see this as God helping Jacob do something incredible.  He’s also clearly trying to impress Rachel, first with the feat of strength and then with an act of service (v. 10).  Then, in a great show of emotion, he kisses her and weeps out loud (v. 11).  Jacob understands that what’s happening here is the result of the guiding hand of God.

This isn’t a good dating strategy!  Girls aren’t impressed by guys trying to be impressive.  What’s impressive about what happens here is that at the wrong time (v. 7), Jacob is at the right place and meets the right girl.  What’s impressive is that, despite Jacob’s prayerlessness and bravado, God’ providence is still lurking in the background, silently leading and governing these events.

Are We Moving In God’s Strength or Our Own?

Moses is contrasting how Abraham’s servant in chapter 24 differed from Jacob’s approach here in chapter 29.  Both result in the forwarding of God’s plan and promises.  But one character moved in God’s strength.  One moved in their own.

From this contrast, we’re meant to consider whether we’re moving forward in God’s strength or our own.  We all do what Jacob is doing here.  On our journey through life, we come to a turning point and our knee-jerk reaction is to use our resources rather than God’s to make it through.

How do we know when we’re doing this?  Here are several indications that we’re moving in our strength, rather than God’s: prayerlessness, lack of accountability, making decisions without seeking wise counsel, assuming that we don’t have anything more to learn, being consumed with what others think – wanting to be impressive rather than known, acting one way at church and another at home.  Churches may do this by neglecting the word and prayer in favor of programs and gimmicks, or when we come to church wanting to be served rather than to serve.

Unfortunately, until Jacob wrestles with God and walks away with a new limp and a new name, he’ll continue to try to secure God’s blessings on his own.  Until then, God graciously pushes his plan forward despite his immaturity and self-focus.  Thankfully, he does no less with us.

Laban Deceives Jacob

In verses 15-30, Laban deceives Jacob.  In chapter 27, two brothers were exchanged by a trick before a blind man.  Here in chapter 29, two sisters are exchanged by a trick in the darkness of night (v. 23, “in the evening”).  Jacob likely had too much to drink and Leah likely wore a wedding veil, and it was dark outside, making Laban’s trick possible.

Jacob gets a taste of his own medicine, and he’s furious (v. 25).  Jacob has been out-Jacobed.  Laban’s reply in verse 26 leaves Jacob speechless.  Whether Laban knew what Jacob had done, we don’t know.  But narrator Moses is making sure we don’t miss the irony here.  Laban’s words to Jacob describe exactly what Jacob had done to bring him here in the first place.  Moses is showing us that Jacob’s past is catching up with him, that he’s getting what he deserved for how he treated Esau.

One commentator says, “In Laban, Jacob meets his match and his means of discipline.”[3]  Jacob is in the refiner’s fire.  He’s being humbled so that he’ll be fit to be a servant-leader of God’s people.

Jacob isn’t the only one who needs a Laban in his life.  We all need the refinement of God’s loving hand in our lives, a refinement that usually comes through someone close to us.

Jacob the Indentured Servant

To make matters worse, Jacob is stuck working for a father-in-law who’s willing to treat his daughters as commodities for bargaining and trading, for seven more years.

This passage makes it clear that Laban is more interested in a business arrangement than he is in helping his relative get a good start on building his own home.  The word “serve” is used seven times in this passage (vv. 15, 18, 20, 25, twice in 27, 30).  It bookends the story (vv. 15 and 30).  Jacob, a relative of Laban, is reduced to a business partner.  Jacob has gone into a foreign land seeking blessing only to become a servant, foreshadowing Israel’s stay in Egypt.

For the next 20 years, Laban and Jacob’s relationship is more like an oppressive lord over an indentured servant rather than an uncle to his nephew.  To Laban, Jacob is nothing more than a laborer under contract.

Leah’s Public Humiliation

The passage doesn’t tell us how Rachel or Leah felt about their father treating them as objects for monetary gain.  31:14-16 will tell us how they feel. At least Rachel here has the love of Jacob.  But , can you imagine how Leah felt in all this?

She was used as a pawn in her father’s financial game.  And it was all done very publicly (v. 22).  It says in verse 17 that Leah’s eyes were “weak,” or “soft.”  This could mean that she had weak vision, a disability that would’ve made it really hard to get by in the ancient world.  Perhaps this is why her sister Rachel is out herding sheep but not her (vv. 6, 9).  Verse 17 contrasts her eye problem with Rachel’s beauty.

So here is Leah with bad eyesight, not as pretty as her sister, struggling with deep insecurities about her disability and appearance and attractiveness, and then her father publicly humiliates her by making her sleep with and marry a man who’s in love with her sister (vv. 18, 20, 30).  She’s denied the opportunity to marry someone who loved her and forced into a relationship with a man who loved someone else.

Try to put yourself in Leah’s shoes.  Try to feel what she felt that night her dad made her sleep with Jacob.  She was used and abused by those who were supposed to protect and cherish her, and then she was publicly paraded around for a week as the new wife of her dad’s latest business partner (v. 27).

This story should break our hearts and make our blood boil.  This is not how God designed things to work.  We’re supposed to see the injustice and evil toward Leah and feel some of the pain that she felt.

The Lord Sees Leah

But Moses wants us to know that we aren’t the only ones who see this evil scheming for what it is (vv. 31-35).  The Lord accepts the one who was rejected.  Rachel will eventually have a child, but for now, the Lord wants her and Jacob and Laban to see that he doesn’t work the way they do.  He doesn’t take advantage of weak people, he blesses them.

Jacob’s coolness toward Leah is understandable.  He wanted to marry Rachel.  But these verses tell us what Leah and God thought about his favoritism.  Leah is utterly heartbroken that her husband doesn’t love her.  The text says that she was hated (vv. 31, 33), afflicted (v. 32), unloved (v. 32), and unattached to her husband (v. 34).  The depth of her pain is seen in how she names her sons.  She longs to be accepted instead of rejected.

Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner says, “On the human plane the story demonstrates the craving of human beings for love and recognition, and the price of thwarting it.”[4]  Some of you know exactly how Leah feels.  You’ve been rejected, denied the love and care you needed, used and abused in ways that leave you feeling hollow and ambivalent and full of rage at the same time.  There’s always a price to be paid when we don’t receive what God designed us to receive.

But there’s also the unbelievable fact that the Lord enters into tragedies like this with his care and healing hands.  Kidner continues: “On the divine level (this story) shows once again the grace of God choosing difficult and unpromising material.”[5]

God moves toward the people everyone else is moving away from.  Leah ends up having more children than Jacob’s other three wives combined: seven, the number of completion.  She’s the mother of the priestly and kingly tribes of Israel, Levi and Judah.  This is evidence of God’s blessing over Leah’s life.

Leah recognizes God’s presence in her affliction.  Three out of four of these boys were named with reference to the Lord.  “The Lord has looked…the Lord has heard…I will praise the Lord” (vv. 32, 33, 35).  She has faith in Abraham’s God, not the gods of Laban.  By her fourth child, she gives up trying to find emotional fulfillment in her husband and looks to the Lord alone (v. 35).  She says with the psalmist, “My father…has forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in” (27:10).  In the Lord, the unloved wife is finally able to transcend her distress.

Dane Ortlund asks, “How do you handle distress – emotional, psychological, physical, financial?  What is your heart-impulse when you feel swamped by adversity?  Cry out to the Lord.  He will lead you to a place of safety.  Perhaps it will not be the safety you expect; perhaps it will not be immediate deliverance from your present trials.  But at bottom he will assure you of your final and ultimate safety – in the arms of Jesus Christ.”[6]

Leah was hated and afflicted and ignored and lived with physical disability and was publicly shamed by her father, but she comes to praise the Lord.  May her example move us to move toward the Lord in our affliction, not away from him.

Afflicted saint, to Christ draw near.  Sing with joy, afflicted one; the battle’s fierce, but the victory’s won!  God shall supply all that you need; Yes, as your days your strength shall be.

Leah, Judah, and the Messiah

The Lord sees Leah in her affliction and Leah comes to praise the Lord as a result.  But even more is going on here than she knows.

Leah brings Judah into the world and Judah will bring the Messiah into the world (49:8-10).  In God’s mercy, the daughter and wife who was unloved will help bring the King of kings into the world.  God is working his sovereign purposes through the “wrong” wife.  The Messiah will come from the wife Jacob hated.

The Messiah, like one of his distant mothers, was also rejected by men.  “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).  “And Pilate said again to them, ‘Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?’  And they cried out again, ‘Crucify him!’  And Pilate said to them, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’  But they shouted all the more, ‘Crucify him.’  So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified” (Mk. 15:12-15).

The lion of the tribe of Judah was rejected in favor of a snake.  Like Leah, he’d done no evil, yet he was used and abused to satisfy the whims of sinful men.

But, also like Leah, there was more going on in his rejection than people understood.  The reason he was rejected was so that we can be accepted.  Our sin separates us from God, removing us from his presence, but God in his mercy sent Jesus to die on the cross to absorb the judgment we deserve so that everyone who trusts in him will be brought back into the full acceptance of God.

The Father accepted his rejected Son, raising him from the dead, proving that he completely accepted Jesus’ sacrifice for sin. The resurrection means that the Lord accepted the rejected One.

The promise of the gospel is that everyone who trusts in Christ will be accepted by God.  No matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like, what disability or difference you have, what you’ve done or what’s been done to you, if you look to Jesus in faith and turn from your sins, God will see you, hear you, and joyfully accept you into his family.

The Lord accepted rejected Leah and rejected Jesus, and he’ll accept rejected you too.  He loves accepting the rejected!

The Lord’s Supper

Those who’ve trusted in Jesus remember what he did on the cross by observing the Lord’s Supper.  The Lord’s Supper is for Christians, for baptized believers who belong to a local church.  If you’re not yet a baptized follower of Jesus who’s part of a local church, we’re glad you’re here, but we’d encourage you to refrain from taking the Supper.  If you’re a visitor and you’ve been baptized as a believer and you’re a member in good standing at another gospel-preaching church, you’re welcome to observe the Supper with us.

Let’s pause and confess our sins to God, remember the cross, and prepare our hearts for the Supper.

Pray for God’s blessing over the Supper (ushers and musicians come forward).

The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, preserves your body and soul for everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your heart by faith, and be thankful.  (take the bread)

The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for you, preserves your body and soul for everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for you, and drink on him in your heart by faith, and be thankful. (take the juice)

Let’s stand and sing “Come, Behold the Wondrous Mystery”

[1]Kelly M. Kapic, You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2022), 155.

[2]Ibid., 154.

[3]Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, vol. 1 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1967), 159.

[4]Ibid., 161.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Dane Ortlund, In the Lord I Take Refuge: 150 Daily Devotions through the Psalms (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 167.