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Jacob Flees from Laban - Fulfilling the Call of God

[Part One of Three)

Genesis 31: 1-5]

Sometimes it’s difficult to do all the things we know we’re supposed to do. It’s easy not to fulfil some of our duties and responsibilities. The duties that we have, that we just struggle with pulling it off. We all face that kind of pressure, don’t we? What’s true about are everyday life can also be true about our spiritual lives. What is interesting about that is that there are things God wants us to do, and sometimes he has rather interesting ways to make sure we get it done. Particularly if it is something we should have done in the first place. You say what in the world are you talking about? Well, I want to tell you a story that illustrates what I’m talking about, and it has a lot of twists and turns in it. I’m also going to suggest it has a bit of a surprise ending. I invite your attention to Genesis chapter . 31

Now, if you will recall, Jacob has gone to this far country and he met a man named Leben who is a relative of his. He has married two of his daughters and now God wants him back in the land that he came from. That’s where the Lord wanted him to be probably for some time now, the question is, what does he have to do to get him back to where he is supposed to be, and that’s what this story is all about. So, we’re going to pick up the story in Genesis, chapter 31, verse one.

“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 toward him was not what it had been.”

(Genesis 31: 1-2)

Now you have to recall what happened in Chapter 30, Laban wanted Jacob to work for him and they struck a deal wherein they divided up the sheep and the goats. Jacob was to take care of the flock, but he could keep for himself all the speckled and spotted and striped from various coloured odd coloured animals, and that would be his wages. Jacob through a combination of his own guile and the providence of God began to prospered and his herds and flocks grew.

This story opens, with Laban’s sons saying, hey, wait a minute, look at Jacob. he's getting wealthy and that's wealth really belongs to our father. But the deal was that he would get to keep the odd coloured sheep and goats and so forth, but Laban’s sons see that the Lord is really blessing Jacob and Jacob’s flocks have really expanded, and Laban’s sons don’t like it. So, what is going on in verse one is nothing more than jealousy, but Jacob hears about it and that bothers him. Jacob noticed Laban’s attitude change towards him, Laban face gives away the fact he no longer has a favourable toward him. Jacob is making all this money and he thinks it is at his expense. So, Jacob sees this unfavourable situation playing out before him and thinks, this is not good. Keep reading verse three.

“Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you.”

(Genesis 31: 3)

Then a third factor emerges in the story in that Lord comes along and says, Jacob, I want you to go back home. Remember home is the land he had promised to give him and to remain with him there. So, on top of the unfavourable situation developing where he is at the moment, he also gets a direct word from the Lord to head back to his homeland. The signs are lining up and they all seem to be saying, go back home. It then says in verse four. 

“So, Jacob sent word to Rachel and Leah to come out to the fields where his flocks were. He said to them, “I see that your father’s attitude toward me is not what it was before, but the God of my father has been with me”.  You know that I’ve worked for your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me by changing my wages ten times. However, God has not allowed him to harm me.

(Genesis 31: 4-7)

 If he said, ‘The speckled ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks gave birth to speckled young; and if he said, ‘The streaked ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore streaked young. So God has taken away your father’s livestock and has given them to me. “In breeding season, I once had a dream in which I looked up and saw that the male goats mating with the flock were streaked, speckled or spotted.

(Genesis 31: 8-10)

“The angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob.’ I answered, ‘Here I am.’  And he said, ‘Look up and see that all the male goats mating with the flock are streaked, speckled or spotted, for I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you.  I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now leave this land at once and go back to your native land.’”

(Genesis 31: 11-13)

Now let me pause here for just a second because of all this stuff that’s happening, he decides he’s got to go back home. Now Laban’s two daughters are his wives, and Jacob calls the wives out to the field. This is going to be a private little meeting outside where he explains in great detail what they probably knew already, what they witnessed. He says, in essence, remember the deal I made with your father well he kept changing the deal with me, matter fact, he changed it 10 times. But reminding them that in spite of all his twists and turns the Lord still multiplied their flocks and herds. Reminding them that it was the Lord who did all of this and brought them prosperity.  So, he’s explaining that to that then and he says in the process that the Lord spoke to me and said, return to my homeland and that the Lord reminded him that he would be with you.

“Then Rachel and Leah replied, “Do we still have any share in the inheritance of our father’s estate? Does he not regard us as foreigners? Not only has he sold us, but he has used up what was paid for us. Surely all the wealth that God took away from our father belongs to us and our children. So do whatever God has told you”.

(Genesis 31: 14-16)

Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, there still an inheritance due for us from our father’s house? They get the message we got to go where you go, and we need to go back to your home. But we are still meant to have an inheritance. The father of these woman tried to deceive Jacob many times, and they say, by cheating you he sold us as strangers. Remember the deal he made with Jacob, Jacob wanted Rachel, and he deceived him, he worked seven years to get Rachel and he ends up with Leah and then it works another seven years to get Rachel. So, what these girls are saying is, he didn’t treat us like daughters with a dowry, he treated us like strangers and effectively sold us, the opposite of what he was meant to do. So, there’s no love lost between the daughters and their father, and they say we’re with you, whatever God says to you, do it, we’ll go with you. That’s the story so far. 

Now, do you think Laban is going to let them go that easy? Do you think they can just go to their father and say, well, we’ve decided to go back to Jacobs home? Do you think Laban will accept that based on everything we know about him so far, that’s doesn’t seem likely. Not likely, so the decide they’re going to have to get out of town after dark.Let’s pick up the story about 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 gods. Moreover, Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him he was running away. So he fled with all he had, crossed the Euphrates River, and headed for the hill country of Gilead”.

(Genesis 31: 17-21)

So, like I said, they got out of town under the cover of darkness. Did you notice what we just read, what’s the odd part of this story? What’s what jumped out of those verses I just read what jumped out to you?  She stole something, what idols, household Gods?  What in the world did she do that for? In the first place, what where these household gods, and why did she take them?

Now, you can imagine the commentaries go crazy trying to explain this because the text doesn’t tell us much more than the basic fact that she took them. As a matter of fact, ancient Jewish commentators and ancient Christian commentators have come up with all kinds of suggestions. Some said that she took the idols, not as idols, but because they were made out of some precious metal and they had intrinsic value so she could melt them down and maybe sell them or something. Another possibility is that this is a suggestion that she was trying to break her father from his idolatry.  It seems, according to this view, that if she took his idols, he wouldn’t be an idolater anymore.  Another suggestion in more modern times is she did it because she was an adult, she took the idols for her personal use. One commentator says that even though Rachel had a measure of faith in the true God, which we know from the previous chapter, it would seem that as a true daughter of her father, she would have been intimately attached to er father religious practices and now had a kind of divided allegiance.  Not wanting to be deprived of any good luck that the idols of her father might confirm.  So that theory,  by the way, Laban’s family did worship false gods alongside the true God.

Now that just seems like a man bending contradiction to us, but apparently in the Old Testament that happens. I know that that kind of thing happens still today, not just on the mission field where sometimes Christianity gets mixed with the local tribal religions  But make no mistake this also happens in the western church, where faith gets mixed in with false teaching. Now there are. Bible teachers who would say that’s not even possible, you can’t do that and my response to that is well, read the Bible with both eyes open, because it happened then and it can happens today. The Bible does however say that this is never a good thing, in fact it clearly suggests it is quite the opposites. How many Christians today still hold on to the old worldly superstitions.

One more comment by another modern commentator says that although she trusted in Jacobs God she also was reluctant to give up completely her previous superstitions. Maybe she thought that taking these things along with in some way help them on their long journey and in their new home to which they were going. This attitude is a little different to many new Christians today, happy to know the Lord, but not willing to separate off from all the old superstitions and the ways of the world. This is the whole purpose of Christian discipleship, to help by training people to follow the correct path after they have made a commitment to follow the Lord. Even today some people who really know the Lord still have an idol, sometimes it is materialism or money or fame or greed.

Alright, well, we had in the story so far.  It is simply that Jacob has decided for a whole bunch of reasons he's got to get out of town.  He convinces his wives, and they leave town without Laban even knowing it, and the only little caveat in this tale is that she takes some religious idols with her.  I wonder how this will all work out. Well, we will find out, next time.