Genesis 30

²⁵ As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. ²⁶ Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” ²⁷ But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. ²⁸ Name your wages, and I will give it.” ²⁹ Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. ³⁰ For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?” ³¹ He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it: ³² let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. ³³ So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.” ³⁴ Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.” ³⁵ But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in the charge of his sons.³⁶ And he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban’s flock. ³⁷ Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. ³⁸ He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, ³⁹ the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted. ⁴⁰ And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban. He put his own droves apart and did not put them with Laban’s flock. ⁴¹ Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the sticks, ⁴² but for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s.⁴³ Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

Genesis 31

¹ Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, “Jacob has taken all that was our father’s, and from what was our father’s he has gained all this wealth.” ² And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before.³ Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.” ⁴ So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah into the field where his flock was⁵ and said to them, “I see that your father does not regard me with favor as he did before. But the God of my father has been with me. ⁶ You know that I have served your father with all my strength, ⁷ yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me. ⁸ If he said, ‘The spotted shall be your wages,’ then all the flock bore spotted; and if he said, ‘The striped shall be your wages,’ then all the flock bore striped. ⁹ Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me. ¹⁰ In the breeding season of the flock I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted, and mottled. ¹¹ Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘Here I am!’ ¹² And he said, ‘Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. ¹³ I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred.’” ¹⁴ Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, “Is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father’s house? ¹⁵ Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money. ¹⁶ All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. Now then, whatever God has said to you, do.” ¹⁷ So Jacob arose and set his sons and his wives on camels. ¹⁸ He drove away all his livestock, all his property that he had gained, the livestock in his possession that he had acquired in Paddan-aram, to go to the land of Canaan to his father Isaac. ¹⁹ Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s household gods. ²⁰ And Jacob tricked Laban the Aramean, by not telling him that he intended to flee. ²¹ He fled with all that he had and arose and crossed the Euphrates, and set his face toward the hill country of Gilead. ²² When it was told Laban on the third day that Jacob had fled, ²³ he took his kinsmen with him and pursued him for seven days and followed close after him into the hill country of Gilead. ²⁴ But God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream by night and said to him, “Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.” ²⁵ And Laban overtook Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the hill country, and Laban with his kinsmen pitched tents in the hill country of Gilead. ²⁶ And Laban said to Jacob, “What have you done, that you have tricked me and driven away my daughters like captives of the sword? ²⁷ Why did you flee secretly and trick me, and did not tell me, so that I might have sent you away with mirth and songs, with tambourine and lyre? ²⁸ And why did you not permit me to kiss my sons and my daughters farewell? Now you have done foolishly. ²⁹ It is in my power to do you harm. But the God of your^[c] father spoke to me last night, saying, ‘Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.’ ³⁰ And now you have gone away because you longed greatly for your father’s house, but why did you steal my gods?”³¹ Jacob answered and said to Laban, “Because I was afraid, for I thought that you would take your daughters from me by force. ³² Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not live. In the presence of our kinsmen point out what I have that is yours, and take it.” Now Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them. ³³ So Laban went into Jacob’s tent and into Leah’s tent and into the tent of the two female servants, but he did not find them. And he went out of Leah’s tent and entered Rachel’s. ³⁴ Now Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel’s saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about the tent, but did not find them. ³⁵ And she said to her father, “Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me.” So he searched but did not find the household gods. ³⁶ Then Jacob became angry and berated Laban. Jacob said to Laban, “What is my offense? What is my sin, that you have hotly pursued me? ³⁷ For you have felt through all my goods; what have you found of all your household goods? Set it here before my kinsmen and your kinsmen, that they may decide between us two. ³⁸ These twenty years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks. ³⁹ What was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it myself. From my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. ⁴⁰ There I was: by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes. ⁴¹ These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. ⁴² If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night.” ⁴³ Then Laban answered and said to Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine. But what can I do this day for these my daughters or for their children whom they have borne? ⁴⁴ Come now, let us make a covenant, you and I. And let it be a witness between you and me.” ⁴⁵ So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. ⁴⁶ And Jacob said to his kinsmen, “Gather stones.” And they took stones and made a heap, and they ate there by the heap. ⁴⁷ Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha, but Jacob called it Galeed. ⁴⁸ Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” Therefore he named it Galeed, ⁴⁹ and Mizpah, for he said, “The Lord watch between you and me, when we are out of one another’s sight. ⁵⁰ If you oppress my daughters, or if you take wives besides my daughters, although no one is with us, see, God is witness between you and me.” ⁵¹ Then Laban said to Jacob, “See this heap and the pillar, which I have set between you and me. ⁵² This heap is a witness, and the pillar is a witness, that I will not pass over this heap to you, and you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, to do harm. ⁵³ The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us.” So Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac, ⁵⁴ and Jacob offered a sacrifice in the hill country and called his kinsmen to eat bread. They ate bread and spent the night in the hill country. ⁵⁵ Early in the morning Laban arose and kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. Then Laban departed and returned home.

In the early 90s there was a Christian rock band named “Big Tent Revival.” They were great and they lasted around a decade producing a number of award-winning albums. They also happened to be one of the few bands that ever actually came through my hometown of Sumter, SC! Their big hit was a song called “Two Sets of Joneses.” It is a really catchy song that compares and contrasts two different young couples and the different paths they took in their lives.

This here’s a song about two sets of Joneses
Rothchild, Evelyn, Rueben, and Sue

And just for discussion through random selection
We’ve chosen two couples who haven’t a clue

Rothchild was lucky to marry so wealthy,
Evelyn bought him a house on the beach.

Rueben and Sue, they had nothing but Jesus
And at night they would pray that he would care for them each

And the rain, came down,
And it blew the four walls down
And the clouds they rolled away
And one set of Joneses, was standing that day

Evelyn’s daddy was proud of young Rothchild,
He worked the late hours to be number one

Just newlyweds and their marriage got rocky,
He’s flying to Dallas, she’s having a son.

Rueben was holding a Gideon’s Bible,
And he screamed “it’s a boy” so that everyone heard

And the guys at the factory took a collection,
And again God provided for bills he incured

And the rain, came down,
And it blew the four walls down
And the clouds they rolled away
And one set of Joneses, was standing that day

So what is the point of this story,
What am I trying to say
Well is your life built on the rock of Christ Jesus
Or a sandy foundation you’ve managed to lay

Well needless to say Evelyn left her husband
N’ sued him for every penny he had
But I truly wish that those two would find Jesus
Before things get worse than they already have

And the rain, came down,
And it blew the four walls down
And the clouds they rolled away

There’s two sets of Joneses
Which ones will you be?

Li de di, li de di, li de di, li de di
Li de di, li de di, li de di, li de di
Li de di. li de di, li de di, li de di di di di[1]

It was a cool song, especially that closing Li de di, li de di, li de di, li de di part! Ha! A lot of early 90s evangelical youth group kids were singing those li de di’s!

I thought about “Two Sets of Joneses” earlier this week when studying Genesis 30 and 31. Moses seems to be clearly “Two Sets of Jones-ing” Laban and Jacob. As these chapters unfold the contrast becomes greater and great, with Laban taking one path (the path of control, manipulation, and self-centeredness) and Jacob taking another (the path of trust and faithfulness). We have already seen that both Laban and Jacob, his nephew, are flawed people, like us all. They were both capable of deceit, for instance. Even so, as these verses progress, we see that Jacob has matured and is taking a different path, whereas Laban had built his life on a “sandy foundation he managed to lay.”

Let us “Two Sets of Joneses” our text and consider the contrast between these two men.

The control contrast: manipulation vs. faith

One of the greatest contrasts between Laban and Jacob is found in how Laban sought increasingly to control situations and people around him whereas Jacob sought increasingly to trust in God. The situation in our text is this: after having completed a total of fourteen years of service to his uncle Laban, and after having married Laban’s two daughters (though, of course, he only desired to marry one daughter and to serve seven years), Jacob is ready to leave. He approaches his uncle/father-in-law and communicates this fact. We begin with Laban’s response in verse 31.

Laban the controller

Genesis 30

³¹ He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it: ³² let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. ³³ So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.” ³⁴ Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.” ³⁵ But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in the charge of his sons. ³⁶ And he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban’s flock.

That Jacob was understandably already weary of Laban’s deceitful and dishonest character can be seen in the fact that when Jacob makes his request for “every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb and the spotted and speckled goats” he then alludes to his own “honesty” that will “answer for me later” by inviting Laban to inspect the animals he takes. In other words, Jacob is trying to act on the up-and-up and is inviting his uncle to confirm that he has, in fact, been honest in his dealings. There was surely a less-than-subtle dig at uncle Laban in this. What is not being said outright is, “I will be honest in my dealings with you, uncle, even if you have not been honest in your dealings with me.”

Laban, again, appears to be exuberant in his agreement: “Good! Let it be as you have said.” But, predictably, Laban attempts to deceive Jacob and to control the situation by removing the animals that he agreed Jacob could have. This is the same pattern as before: Laban asks Jacob what he wants, Jacob answers, Laban agrees, then Laban seeks to manipulate, control, and deceive.

Laban’s need to be in control is further seen in Genesis 31 when finally he overtakes Jacob who had fled with his family and his livestock. What Laban says to Jacob in his anger is most insightful.

²⁶ And Laban said to Jacob, “What have you done, that you have tricked me and driven away my daughters like captives of the sword? ²⁷ Why did you flee secretly and trick me, and did not tell me, so that I might have sent you away with mirth and songs, with tambourine and lyre? ²⁸ And why did you not permit me to kiss my sons and my daughters farewell? Now you have done foolishly. ²⁹ It is in my power to do you harm. But the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, ‘Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.’

⁴³ Then Laban answered and said to Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine. But what can I do this day for these my daughters or for their children whom they have borne? ⁴⁴ Come now, let us make a covenant, you and I. And let it be a witness between you and me.”

See how Laban’s need to be in control skews his perception:

• He acts outraged that Jacob had “tricked” him (now that is ironic!).
• He accuses Jacob of treating his daughters poorly.
• He claims that he wanted the opportunity to send Jacob and his family off with a party, when, clearly, he intended to deceive and thwart them until the very moment they left.
• He accuses Jacob of being foolish.
• He arrogantly asserts that he is a person of great power and has power over Jacob.
• He makes a bold naked assertion of outright ownership over Jacob’s wives, children, and flocks.
• He demands that an agreement be made on his terms.

The reality is this: control is a drug and controlling people soon lose the ability to even see their need to control everything and everybody! It is also abundantly clear that controlling people will resent and attack those who do not wish to be controlled by them. Think of a wife with a controlling husband and the ways that he will seek to squash any attempt on her part to have her own opinions or to ever disagree with him. Think even of a controlling parent who absolutely suffocates his or her children with over-parenting and seeks to determine and dictate every single facet of the child’s present and future (this is in stark contrast to healthy, balanced parenting, by the way). Think of the controlling church that has become a cult and seeks to dictate what everybody in the church does. (I think of an infamous pastor from some years back that had such control over his church and the people in it that they had to submit their personal family vacation plans to him for approval.)

Yes, control is a drug. And, in order to maintain it, the controlling person will manipulate and deceive everybody around him.

Jacob the faithful

But look now at the very opposite of control. Jacob, knowing his father-in-law’s character and penchant for deceit, takes steps to see his inheritance come to him despite his father-in-law’s duplicity.

³⁷ Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. ³⁸ He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, ³⁹ the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted. ⁴⁰ And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban. He put his own droves apart and did not put them with Laban’s flock. ⁴¹ Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the sticks, ⁴² but for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s. ⁴³ Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

Jacob’s actions will sound strange to our ears. The HCSB Study Bible gives a nice summary of what he did here:

Jacob began a six-year effort (31:41) to increase his wealth at Laban’s expense. During that time he used at least three different techniques to make the flocks produce sheep and goats he could keep: (1) he separated the strong animals from the weak, using only the strong ones for his breeding purposes; (2) he set…peeled branches…in the water channels where the sheep bred; and (3) he made the flocks face the streaked and completely dark sheep in Laban’s flocks. Though the latter two practices have no scientific value, God Himself (31:7-8,42) and the Angel of the Lord (31:11-12) caused Jacob to become very rich.[2]

What is telling here is (a) Jacob did not react to Laban’s deceitfulness with rage (he seemed to expect it) and (b) Jacob put himself in a position to receive the blessing of God. We know this because Jacob will later reveal to Leah and Rachel that it was God who told him that he would receive the spotted and speckled and striped from among the flock. So all of these actions with these sticks and the watering trough and facing the flocks this way and that were acts of obedience and preparation for God’s movement.

In other words, Laban sought to control and Jacob sought to trust. Laban deceived and Jacob acted with integrity. Two sets of Joneses, indeed. In these two men we find two paths, two ways of doing life, two approaches to the presence of God in our midst. The one path is the path of selfishness, manipulation, control, and forsaking God. The other is the path of trust, submission to God, and obedience. In Laban and Jacob we see the contrast of control.

The theological contrast: faulty views of God vs. a relationship with God

In Laban and Jacob we see an even more fundamental contrast. It is a theological contrast, a contrast in the way the two men approached God. Surely this contrast is the one that gave rise to the first contrast.

Laban the faulty theologian

What becomes clear in a number of ways in our text is that Laban is a profoundly deficient view of God. He is a bad theologian and therefore a bad follower. We can see the deficiency of his view in a number of ways.

First, in Genesis 30, Laban reveals that he practices divination.

²⁵ As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. ²⁶ Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” ²⁷ But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. ²⁸ Name your wages, and I will give it.”

He says it almost an aside. It is almost a throw-away line: “I have learned by divination.” The ESV Study Bible observes:

The narrator does not specify the precise method by which Laban discovers that the Lord has blessed him because of Jacob. The Israelites were later prohibited by God from practicing divination (Deut. 18:10) because it sought to provide knowledge by inappropriate methods (e.g., interpreting omens, using supernatural powers). Laban’s use of divination is sinful, even though the information obtained is accurate.[3]

Uncle Laban is therefore trafficking in occultic actions, pagan practices. What is he doing in that tent in the wee hours of the night? Apparently he is reading the bones of animals or the stars or some such in an effort to ascertain reality. Beware divination! Beware seeking to tap into spiritual insights through means that God has neither ordained or blessed.

He makes another interesting aside in Genesis 31, when he overcomes fleeing Jacob. Laban, angry at Jacob, says the following. Listen closely:

²⁹ It is in my power to do you harm. But the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, ‘Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.’

Ah! Did you catch it? “But the God of your father spoke to me last night…” You can see the distance between Laban and God. He speaks of God as being outside of his own relational sphere. God and Laban do not truly know one another, or, we should rather say, Laban does not know God! It is a short phrase—“the God of your father”—but it reveals a great deal! The God of heaven and earth is a stranger to Laban.

But then Laban’s distance from God becomes even more explicit. In Genesis 31 we discover that Laban had false gods, idols in his home.

¹⁹ Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s household gods.

³⁰ And now you have gone away because you longed greatly for your father’s house, but why did you steal my gods?

In the first verse, Rachel steals her father’s gods before she departs with Jacob and the rest of the family. In the second verse Laban confronts Jacob about his missing gods. This is not good! The ESV Study Bible notes that “‘[h]ousehold gods’ translates the Hebrew word terapim. In spite of their being mentioned quite often in the Bible, knowledge of these objects is vague, the term often being translated as “images/idols.”[4]

Whatever they were, they were (a) a result of Laban’s distance from and lack of relationship with the true God, (b) seen to be objects of power (this can be seen, for instance, in both Laban’s irritation at finding them missing and in Rachel stealing them for her own journey), and (c) objects that Laban obviously prized greatly and was attached to.

Divination. Distance from God. Idolatry. No wonder Laban was a scoundrel. It is a tragic thing to see a man who has been warped by faulty conceptions of God. Let us be clear: what we think of God will inevitably shape how we live our lives! There is no escaping this. Your theology will inevitably manifest in your life.

Jacob the child of God

If Laban’s paganism becomes more and more clear in our chapters, it is also true that Jacob’s relationship with God seems to grow stronger and stronger. This, too, is evident in many ways.

In Genesis 30 Jacob seems almost to be evangelizing his father-in-law by pointing out to Laban that his prosperity is a result of God’s presence and blessing.

²⁹ Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. ³⁰ For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?”

Over those fourteen years had Jacob seen Laban’s household gods and Laban’s divination? Had he come to believe here when the time had come for him to depart that Laban needed to know that the true God was not as Laban conceived of him?

Jacob also speaks of the true God to Leah and Rachel, his wives, in Genesis 31. Listen to the ease and openness of his speak about God in his home.

¹ Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, “Jacob has taken all that was our father’s, and from what was our father’s he has gained all this wealth.” ² And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before. ³ Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.” ⁴ So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah into the field where his flock was ⁵ and said to them, “I see that your father does not regard me with favor as he did before. But the God of my father has been with me. ⁶ You know that I have served your father with all my strength, ⁷ yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me. ⁸ If he said, ‘The spotted shall be your wages,’ then all the flock bore spotted; and if he said, ‘The striped shall be your wages,’ then all the flock bore striped. ⁹ Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me. ¹⁰ In the breeding season of the flock I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted, and mottled.¹¹ Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘Here I am!’ ¹² And he said, ‘Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. ¹³ I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred.’” ¹⁴ Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, “Is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father’s house? ¹⁵ Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money. ¹⁶ All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. Now then, whatever God has said to you, do.”

This is a beautiful passage! Jacob preaches a mini-sermon to his wives. They hear it and believe it. Jacob’s God is being embraced by these ladies. To be sure, there is still a journey to undertake in their faith, as is evident by Rachel stealing the household gods. The old ways are hard to shake off. Regardless, they are moving toward the land of promise with a husband who knows the Lord and they profess that God has indeed blessed them and that God should be obeyed. This is a family going in the right direction.

Later in Genesis 31, Jacob will finally have enough of his father-in-law and rebuke Laban thus:

⁴² If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night.

This is bold! This is powerful! This is needed! Jacob stands up and pronounces that the God before whom Laban has sinned and mocked and plotted is truly with him, Jacob, and is angry with Laban (God “rebuked you last night”). The theological gloves are off, in other words.

Two sets of Joneses. Two ways of living life. Two paths.

This episode between Jacob and his uncle/father-in-law is a cautionary tale. For followers of Jesus we rejoice that Jacob stayed true to the covenant, imperfect though he was, and that Jacob rejected Laban’s paganism and idolatry. Again, the great miracle is that God worked His work through people like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But He truly did! We are here, because they were faithful there.

Followers of Jesus Christ know that He is the whole point of these covenant events and this grand unfolding of the drama of salvation. King Jesus is what all of this is moving toward. And that means that our lives should reflect the faithfulness of God’s people at their best early in the unfolding of the covenant.

Jacob, imperfect and stumbling though he was, shines in Genesis 30 and 31. He seems to understand that his life was not intended to be lived at a distance from God and His people and the home that God had made for him. He wanted to live in the covenant and walk in its flowering. So, too, should followers of Jesus today.

One cannot say “Jesus is Lord!” while also saying “I am in control!” One must choose who is truly Lord. And one need not seek to control and manipulate when one has died at the foot of the cross and been raised anew by the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

I am grateful for the example of Jacob and the great fathers and mothers of our faith. Let us flee the siren call of control and self-preservation and give ourselves completely to Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords.

 

[1] https://genius.com/Big-tent-revival-two-sets-of-jones-lyrics

[2] Holman Bible Editorial Staff; Holman Bible Editorial Staff. HCSB Study Bible (Kindle Locations 89999-90005). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[3] Crossway Bibles. ESV Study Bible (Kindle Locations 17565-17568). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

[4] Crossway Bibles. ESV Study Bible (Kindle Locations 17606-17607). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.