Genesis 29: 15-35 Love can be an Idol
Last week we explored fatherhood and the pain caused by absent and abusive fathers. It is a funny thing how some sin goes inter generational. Abraham played favouritism when it came to his son Isaac. Isaac turned into one of the most passive characters you will encounter in the Bible. When you read about him, he is either sitting, lying down or at the very least, passive. His wife is searched for by a servant and brought to him. His son hunts for him. Food is brought to him. Worst of all, he also played favouritism. The little energy he did have went to Esau, even though God revealed that Jacob, the second born twin was the son of the promise. Esau grew up to be skilled, confident, and manly whilst Jacob grew up to be cynical and conniving, a man that tried to get his way through deceit. Because he had daddy issues. We somewhat jokingly refer to “daddy issues” but it is a quite common and a very serious pain.
How this played out in Jacob’s life was as follows. He became a refugee wanderer desperate for love. That put him in a position to be exploited by the powerful and the greedy and his uncle Laban was quick to capitalise on this. He gave Jacob a job and a home. If you lack love that was supposed to be given to you by primary people in your life, like your father, you should turn to God. Most of us don’t. We then turn to other people in our lives not to love us as they are with what they can give, but to love us like themselves and the person we didn’t get proper love from. No relationship or person can carry that burden awfully long. It makes us blind to who the real person is. It makes us place unreasonable demands on them that crushes the relationship.
You see this in Jacob. The fact that he offers Laban seven years of labour for Rachel, tells us that. This was four times the normal amount to be paid for a bride at the time. The story says that it went by quickly because of his love for Rachel. But this “love” was much more of an infatuation than a pure love. See, Jacob saw in a marriage with beautiful Rachel a solution to all his pain and sorrow. He loved the solution Rachel offered him in his mind, more so than he got to know her, and loved her for who she was. He was after the validation and comfort of Rachel and her outward beauty at least as much, if not more than he was after Rachel herself. When seven years pass, the way in which Jacob tells Laban he now “wants” Rachal is a very vulgar, course way if you translate it directly from the Hebrew. It’s like saying: “I want to marry your daughter because I feel like having sex”!
Marriages used to be a combination between a business transaction and a family affair. It was the joining and strengthening of two families. Your marriage was about way more than your personal fulfillment. It was about the community, the children to be born from it and the extended family. In Jacob’s mind it was more about his needs and hurts. And to many people it is like this today. People enter marriage with unreasonable expectations of each other. You see it in the engagement announcements and wedding invites and announcements sent out nowadays…Photo’s of the couple in romantic movie poses, elaborate fairy tale story included about how both were barely hanging onto life until they found each other and how they are now dead set to live happy ever after with the help of your sacrificial and expensive wedding gift. Is it any wonder that the divorce rate is so high? If you expect of people what only God can give you, the ending is not good. That is why Jack drowned at the end of the movie Titanic. Rose demanded a Saviour, not just a boyfriend! It killed the poor man! 😊
So, Jacob is so hungry for love and so delusional as to who Rachel is and how she can love that he walks blindly into a trap Laban has set. He marries and sleeps with who he thinks is Rachel but when he wakes up the next morning Rachel, turned into Leah. Now it is so interesting, when you expect a partner, an idol, or any fallible human being to be a Saviour, your “Rachel” will always turn out to be a disappointing Leah in the morning. The one that falls short, the one that doesn’t deliver what you hoped. When this happens, people do one of a few things:
- They either just chase after another Rachel, paying an even greater price and raising their expectations of the next person even higher, leading to the same sad ending and a cycle that repeats itself and leaves many casualties in its wake.
- Or they fall in despair and become cynical, closed to love, and closed to being loved.
- Or they stick with their “wrong” choice but become abusive and manipulative. They make that other person believe that they are more than they deserve and must therefore put up with any behaviour from them. There is a fourth, better way Leah shows us that we will get to…
What is an idol? When we think of idols, we tend to come up with pictures of ridiculous small statues that people bow down to. There was a time where idols came in this form. It was an attempt to make imaginary gods of the imagination visible. Today’s idols are way different and much more dangerous. They are not weird looking statues that is tangible and visible. We see through those nowadays. No, todays idols are invisible and sometimes even noble things that takes the place of God in our lives. Things we expect to do for us what only God can do. As good and god given as a marriage with a man or a woman may sound, even that can be distorted into an idol that separates us from the healing and love that is to be found in God alone. It is what happens to both Jacob and Leah in this passage and Leah has even more to teach us here that Jacob, so let us go have a look at her…
Leah’s pain
Let us explore another remarkably interesting character. Leah. The translation “bad eyesight” might not be a good one. It is juxta positioned not with Rachel’s eyesight but with her good looks. So, she was probably cross eyed or had an unsightly facial deformity. It is hard for any woman to live with that but to living with that and have a gorgeous sister is really hard. Laban knew he could get a good price for Rachel, but custom had it that Leah needs to be married off first. And who would want to marry poor Leah? So, she felt unloved and unwanted by her father in her own way. And when she married Jacob, she got the same from him. He didn’t want her. He was never interested in her. He wanted to marry Rachel! Story of her life!
The story of Leah and Jacob would have been quite the sad tragedy if God hadn’t shown up. But God tends to the unloved and he broke through for both. For Jacob already in a previous encounter and more fully some time later. For Leah in this passage. God gave Leah the gift of children. Verse 31 says it was because he saw that she was not loved. Remember how God heard the cries of Ishmael in the dessert? It is almost the same kind of thing that happens here. God sees and hears the cries of the neglected and unloved. This gift gave this powerless woman power over her beautiful sister. But there is a big difference between feeling you have worth because you have children and feeling because God sees you as his child and loves you, he blessed you with a gift…and this was the way in which Leah needed to grow.
And there is this beautiful progression in Leah. It is reflected in her naming her children. She acknowledges God as they are born. She refers to God not by the generic Hebrew “Elhohim” but by the more personal Jahwe. This means she learned from Jacob about the God who revealed Himself to Abraham and accepted Him as her God. Now, with the first children the hope is expressed that this will make her loved by her husband. But when the fourth son was born, she just says that she will now praise the Lord. It shows that she has found her self worth now in God’s love for her, not in the imperfect love of her husband and father. It is not without meaning that this happened with the birth of Judah, the forefather of King David and Jesus, the One who showed us the best just how much God loves us.
What does this teach us about God?
In last Sunday’s passage we saw how God revealed Himself as a Father to the fatherless and thus as the One who loves the unloved and neglected. Here again God reveals Himself as a Father to the fatherless (or the neglected-by-a-father), but something else is added. God reveals himself also as a Partner to the unloved partner and the partner-less. Knowing this and trusting this about God unlocks life. Let me explore a little how…
You see, there are people who walk around with deep pain about the fact that they do not find a life partner. Even today, society sometimes looks down on people, who often through no fault of their own, are single. Such single people question themselves and experience depressing loneliness. They sometimes get so desperate that they settle for anyone that would take them and that leads to abuse. Can you imagine the hurt and pain? To these people God says, find your self worth in my love and care for you. Don’t settle for abuse and neglect, you will then be better of being single with me. To be single offers many opportunities for connection and meaning people with partners don’t have.
But even to those with partners this revelation of God is helpful. Also, for us in marriages, God says, don’t find your validation and self-worth in how much an imperfect person attends to your needs and healing. Yes, I can use them in that process, but ultimately it is me, God that attends and loves you as you should be loved. Nobody can match my love for you and being secure in my love for you frees you to love your partner without trying to be his or her saviour (and drown like Jack in the process!).
Close
To live life well, you need to be convinced of two things. Your own value and that of others. When you watch television news nowadays, you will hear a lot of people shouting to get heard and acknowledged as a person of value. Those who respond and adjust experience how that makes also their own sense of value and worth rise. But some, instead of just requesting that their own value be acknowledge, forgets to acknowledge and maintain a sense of value of the other and then things go haywire. As I watch all this unfold on television news, I become more and more convinced that this problem will not be solved on streets rioting, also not in meetings and not even by votes. If we want to solve this problem, we will have to solve it in our hearts. And that only Jesus can do.
Why do you and everybody around you have worth? Because the Creator of Heaven and Earth see you as valuable and loves you and also those around you. Open your heart to that and taste the peace of Leah.
Amen
Gabriel J Snyman
June 26th 2020
*Source referenced: Keller, T. 2009. Counterfeit Gods. When the empty promises of love, money and power let you down. Penguin: USA