Thru the Bible

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: [ 0m0s ] Ho.

[ 0m0s ] Thru the Bible, but on the foundation he saints of the Lord. He's laid for your faith in his excellent word.

Steve Schwetz: [ 0m17s ] The chickens are coming home to roost. That's how our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee describes what's happening to Jacob in Genesis chapters 29 to 31. Welcome to through the Bible. I'm Steve Schwetz, your host, and I'm so glad that you're with us for another great study in God's word. As you settle in on the Bible bus and open your copy of God's word, let me share a couple of encouraging notes from fellow travelers just like you.

[ 0m41s ] First, we hear from Eliza in Chicago. "I praise God for this ministry and how it's helped me to grow in my relationship with God through His son, Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, and His beautiful, priceless gift of salvation. Thank you, God, for giving Dr. McGee and the vision and gift to preserve His teaching of the word for us to glean from and grow. I am honored to offer my continuous support for the ministry and would greatly appreciate receiving the Bible bus passes to share this ministry with others. May God continue to bless all you who are called to serve in this wonderful work."

[ 1m16s ] Well, Eliza, thanks so much for those encouraging words and we're grateful to have you with us as a faithful member of the team that supports this ministry and then flings the seed to others around the world. Your passes should arrive soon, by the way. And then here's another one from a listener who shares this. "Hi, Steve, Greg, and the rest of the TTB family. I praise God for your faithfulness in continuing to carry on the calling of Dr. McGee to reach the whole world with the whole word. 31 years ago, I was introduced to you on radio. From then on, I was on and off the bus depending on my availability at the time when the program was aired. Even then, God was teaching and growing me all the while. Later on the app, I started listening more consistently and resolved to be a more consistent passenger. God willing, I will be completing my third trip through the Bible with you. Thank you again for encouraging me to read the passage before the study. I confess that I haven't done it in the past. However, I have just started and found that I'm getting more out of our time together. I'm so excited about what God is doing through this ministry and I pray that the whole world will get on the Bible bus and get to the destination which each heart desperately desires, that is Jesus Christ who is the way, the truth and the life. I have passed out over 1,000 Bible bus passes and will continue contributing towards the brake fluid as the Bible bus rolls along, stopping to pick up more passengers. God bless you all abundantly. For as long as the Lord allows, I will keep riding along on the Bible bus. I pray that it reaches into the farthest parts of the earth with its piercing, darkness, effacing headlights."

[ 2m51s ] Wow. Isn't that amazing? It sure is an encouraging letter. And thank you for partnering with us so faithfully. May God bless you as you continue sharing His word with others. Well, if you'd like a pack of those Bible bus passes to share God's word with the people in your life, just call us, 1-800-65-Bible. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word that does meet us where we are and then shapes us to what lies ahead. Use it to draw us closer to You and to one another. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.

[ 3m25s ] We're off to Genesis 29 as we continue through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: [ 3m30s ] And we're putting in today at verse 30 of chapter 29. Now, if you have your Bible, turn there, verse 30 of chapter 29 of Genesis. And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years. You see this man, Jacob, we saw last time was totally deceived by his uncle. His uncle promised him that he would give him Rachel if he would serve seven years. And he served those seven years faithfully, and what did he get? Well, he got Leah. And believe me, he got the short end of the stick. Poor Jacob was certainly disappointed.

[ 4m26s ] And after all, you must recall that he put one over on his father, and he short changed his own brother. He pretended to be the elder when he was the younger. Now he's given the elder when he thought he was getting the younger. So he has to serve now seven more years. And he's learning that chickens do come home to roost, and that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Now Uncle Laban made him serve twice as long as he originally agreed to, and that was long enough. But believe me, this is a long time. 14 years he served. And that gives him now two wives, somebody says. And that's right. And somebody else is going to say, "Well, it's in the Bible. God must approve of it."

[ 5m22s ] Now, God doesn't approve of everything that's in the Bible. That may startle some of you, but God didn't approve of the devil telling a lie. God didn't approve of David telling a lie, and God didn't approve of David's sin. He judged him for it. But the record is inspired. And the thing that's inspired here are not the thoughts. The thing that's inspired here is the record or the words. And this is an accurate record that he did have two wives. And this is the way it came about. And that's where inspiration comes in, friend. It doesn't mean God approved of everything that's in the Bible. God disapproved of this, and let me say this to you, this man had plenty of trouble in his family from here on out. And it all goes back, of course, to his own methods that he had used, which God could not approve.

[ 6m25s ] Now in verse 31 and 32, and let me read them. "And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son. She called his name Reuben. For she said, 'Surely the Lord hath looked upon my affliction. Now therefore my husband will love me.'" And so Leah is a pretty sad person because she knows that her husband loves her sister more than he loves her. And now she becomes the mother of Reuben. And that must have brought joy to her heart because he's the eldest son. He was not the one in the line that was to lead to the Lord Jesus Christ. Actually, the one that's to lead to Christ will be Judah. And that was the last son that Leah had. You see, Leah had four sons. She had Reuben, and then in verse 33 here, she had Simeon, verse 34, the record that she had Levi. And so actually she had some of the outstanding boys of the 12 sons of Jacob. And the fourth son in verse 35, here is Judah. And out of Judah is the one that is to furnish the kingly line.

[ 7m46s ] David was in this line, and then later on, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ himself according to the flesh, he came in the line of Judah. And Levi was the priestly tribe, and Reuben lost his position as the first born. You'll recall because of his sin. Now we have here these four boys that were the offspring of Leah. And when we come to chapter 30, why, again we begin to see that God is moving in spite of the man's sin, this man, Jacob. Not because of it, but in spite of it. And we find that this man, Jacob, now is disturbed. Let me read chapter 30, verse one. "And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and said unto Jacob, 'Give me children, or else I die.'"

[ 8m43s ] You see, a woman in that day was disgraced unless she did have offspring, and the more, well, the more she had, maybe not the merrier, but the more the better it was for her. That is her position. Now, notice verses two and three. "And Jacob's anger was keenly against Rachel, and he said, 'Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?' And she said, 'Behold my maid, Bilhah, go in unto her, and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.'" Well, again we see this was the practice of that day. And you will recall, I'm sure, those of you following this study that Abraham and Sarah practiced it, and God did not approve it then, and he's not going to approve it here. The record is here, and it's an accurate record, but it doesn't mean God approved it. In fact, it's quite obvious that God disapproved it.

[ 9m47s ] My, the strife that we've already called attention to, that was in the family of Abraham, was in the family of Isaac, as we saw. Now it's in Jacob's family already, and he's in for a great deal more trouble. Now we find that Bilhah was Rachel's maid, and she bore Dan and Naphtali. And then we find that Zilpah, the maid of Leah, bore Gad and Asher. So we have here, well, another Issachar. And we find, I'm not reading these verses in this chapter, you see, just a record of the birth here of these boys where you, you'll remember that there were 12 sons of Jacob. And they're very important because from these 12 sons will come the 12 tribes of Israel. That is the nation will come from them.

[ 10m37s ] Believe me, Jacob had his hands full with these 12 boys. We find also that there's a girl there from Leah. Her name was Dinah. And I guess she served a good purpose because there are a lot of restaurants today named Dinah Shack or Dinah's, Dinah and room or something. And so she did serve a good purpose. And Issachar and Zebulun are mentioned here also. Now I'm going to read in verses 22 here, well, I'll read down to 24. "And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son and said, 'God hath taken away my reproach.' And she called his name Joseph and said, 'The Lord shall add to me another son.'"

[ 11m22s ] Now, this is the boy that will follow down into the land of Egypt and make way for the rest of his brethren later on. He's quite remarkable. We'll have to save that story of him until another day, but it's coming up, you can be sure. Now verses 25. "And it came to pass when Rachel had born Joseph, that Jacob said unto Laban, 'Send me away that I may go unto mine own place and to my country. Give me my wives, my children, for whom I've served thee, and let me go, for thou knowest my service which I have done thee.'"

[ 12m2s ] Well, this is quite remarkable here, by the way, because we're going to see that this man, Laban, had really mistreated his son-in-law and his nephew, Jacob. And listen to Uncle Laban here. You see, he's not going to be through, you can be sure of that. Jacob wants to get away. And now Uncle Laban says in verse 27, "And Laban said unto him, 'I pray thee, if I found favor in thine eyes, tarry, for I've learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake.'" Now, this is something quite interesting. This was something that you will recall that Abimelech, King of Gerar, found out when Isaac was in his midst. He was blessed because of his presence. And this is something now that Uncle Laban has discovered that God is with Jacob, and he's blessed him. And Uncle Laban said, "Now, look, my boy, don't rush off, don't leave me, just hang around. And I've been blessed, and I want to raise your wages. I'll pay you more."

[ 13m10s ] Listen to him in verse 28. "And he said, 'Appoint me thy wages, and I'll give it.'" And I tell you, Jacob ought to know by now that any time Uncle Laban made a deal, that he was the one that came off the winner, not the other fella. But Jacob's learning a lesson. Jacob wants to leave. Uncle Laban says, "I'll pay you more." And now he said to him, "Thou knowest how I've served thee and how thy cattle was with me. For it was little which thou hadst before I came, it's now increased into a multitude, and the Lord hath blessed thee since my coming. And now when shall I provide for mine own house also?" In other words, listen to Jacob. You talk about a man complaining. He's really, he's singing the blues. In other words, he's saying here, "All I've got out of all of this service for you are two wives and two maids, maids to the wives, and I've got a house full of boys." In fact, he's gotten 11 boys now. Now, what in the world is he going to do? How's he going to feed them? And he says, "God blessed you and he prospered you, and I don't have anything." In other words, "You are the one that's prospering and I'm not."

[ 14m32s ] And now Jacob says, and will you listen to him, verse 31. He said, "What shall I give thee?" And Jacob said, "Thou shalt not give me anything. If thou will do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock. I'll pass through all thy flock today removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, all the brown cattle among the sheep and the spotted and speckled among the goats and of such shall be my hire." In other words, the pure breed will be Laban's, but that which is just a half breed or not breeds at all that are not blue ribbon cattle, I'll take those if you'll give them to me. And that's all that you'll need to do. These are the off breeds. They were not purebred by any means. And he said, "You let me have these, that that'll be my wages." Now that sounds like a pretty good proposition.

[ 15m31s ] Verse 33 now, let me read. "So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before thy face. Everyone that's not speckled and spotted among the goats and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen with me." And Laban said, "Behold, I would it might be according to thy word." "And he removed that day the he-goats that were ring-streaked and spotted, and all the goats that were speckled and spotted, and everyone that had some white in it, and all the brown among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons." In other words, they would not be able to breed with the others. Jacob would take that which is the off breed, and only the full breed would bear, and that would belong to Uncle Laban, but the others would be his. He's making here a very interesting deal. And the way that it worked out is quite interesting. And I want to read this because this has been criticized.

[ 16m37s ] Verse 36. "He set three days journey betwixt himself and Jacob. And Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks. And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree and peeled white streaks in them and made the white appear which was in the rods, and he set the rods which he had piled before the flocks in the gutters and the watering troughs, when the flocks came to drink that they should conceive when they came to drink." Well, there've been several explanations of this. There are those that say this is nothing in the world but just pure superstition. And others say it's just old wives tales, and this is certainly something that ought not to be in the Bible record. I think probably it should be in the record. In fact, it's my judgment it should be in the record. It's very important that it be in the word of God. And the fact of the matter is, this is not superstition. There are several explanations.

[ 17m40s ] Now I'm of the opinion that there are those that today have been able to ascertain that this does have an effect upon those that are bringing into the world animals, and certainly what a woman sees in time of pregnancy and her experience during that time has a tremendous effect upon the child. And today the psychiatrists and psychologists make a great deal of it. Well, it affects the animal world also. Now, I do not intend to go into that particular phase of it, but there are things that frankly, I can't explain. And I don't know that anybody that can explain them. If they can, they ought to explain them to me, because I'm in the dark. I remember in our community where I lived as a boy in Southern Oklahoma, there was one of these men that would take a forked stick and tell you where there was water. And everybody in our neighborhood when they wanted to drill a well, they called for him. He came along with a forked stick and the interesting thing is that every time they called him in and he'd picked out a spot, they drilled for water where he said, and they got water.

[ 18m55s ] Now I don't know whether they would have got water if they hadn't called him in. I don't know. All I know is that there was a very strange procedure. Sounds superstitious to me, but it seemed to work. I know in many cases it does not work. But I found out that there are a lot of scientific cures today that they give and they don't work. And there are a lot of scientific explanations that don't work. So that just goes to say it, it doesn't work, and in some cases, it does work and that doesn't prove anything. All I'm trying to say is don't rule this out as being superstitious. Now, if you want to know the thing that I actually think, both Laban and Jacob believed this is what caused them to be ring-streaked. And that's the thing that's important for this story. Maybe you're smart enough not to believe it, but these two boys believed it. And what you must remember, all those cattle were together and some cattle would produce ring-streaked and speckled, and some of the offspring would be white. Now if they're speckled, some speckle, and some not, even that one that's not may bring into the world one that is not.

[ 20m14s ] I know that it may use a very homely illustration. I remember we had a cat one time when I was a boy and that cat was the prettiest, whitest cat that I've ever seen. Now she had a bunch of kittens, and there were a lot of them just speckled, you know, just like the cattle, and several were perfectly white. And lo and behold, in that litter there was one that was as black as ink. Now you tell me how he got in there when his mama was a white cat, just a snow white cat, and here she has a black kitten and yet other speckled and others white. Well, I know she must have met a black cat somewhere. But I do know this, why did one be perfectly white and one black? Well, that's what's happening at these cattle. I don't understand all that myself, and I don't propose to try to explain it. All I say is this is the record that is here. These men believed it, and Jacob is using trickery again, regardless of whether there's value in it or not. He's using trickery. Now he's been quite a trickster, you can see, but he's met an uncle that's a better trickster than he is. And he's trying now to make a comeback.

[ 21m28s ] Well, may I say to you, poor Jacob, because he came there with just a walking stick, and when he leaves, he leaves with quite a few possessions. Now, God is calling him to leave. And before we leave the chapter, I think probably I ought to call attention to this. It may be mechanical about these boys, but here you have the mention of the 11 sons. And that's important because these 11 sons are the sons that are going to constitute the 12 tribes of Israel. Now, in chapter 31, Jacob now leaves Laban without giving notice. And he takes French leave. And they don't even have a farewell party. And Jacob and Laban then make a contract not to defend and hurt each other. Then they separate in an outwardly friendly manner. Now this is a rather lengthy chapter that we've come to. Here it has 55 verses, chapter 31. We're going to save most of it for next time. But here's the other side of the coin. God wants to get him out of that land. He recognizes that the influence there is not good for Jacob, and this growing family that's coming along for these boys. Because these are to be the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. And God is anxious to get them out from that environment and back into Abraham's country, the country he'd promised to Abraham. And God now is calling Jacob to return. And you'll notice here, as we come into chapter 31, you'll see that Jacob now is getting more than Uncle Laban is getting, and he doesn't like it. And his sons don't like it either. That is Laban's sons. And this man wants now to leave, and he takes Rachel and Leah meets them out in the field and they plot to take leave and they do take leave. And poor Jacob, he's perplexed. He's frustrated. He does not know now where to turn. And it's this time that God has called him to leave. And God has called him to leave for the sake of his family, the boys, the children there that they should not stay in that environment. But we'll have to leave that till next time. Until then, may God richly bless you. I love you.

[ 23m56s ] Well, Jacob's life sounds more like a soap opera or reality TV, doesn't it? And you know, the truth is, human nature hasn't changed much from one generation to the next. There's more family drama ahead and we're going to pick it up in our next study. If you want to dig a little deeper, maybe spend more time in this section of God's word yourself, well, we got a couple of free resources that'll help you do just that. First, if you haven't already downloaded our free digital book, Briefing the Bible, you got to get it. Inside you'll find Dr. McGee's notes and outlines for every study on our five-year journey. It's really a great way to help as we navigate the highways and byways of God's word. You can download it for free in our app or over at ttb.org, or just call us at 1-800-65-Bible to request an abbreviated paperback copy by mail. And then you can also write to us at box 7100, Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C 6B1. And if you're interested in starting a small group study yourself, maybe with your friends and neighbors or folks from church, our printed New Testament Bible companions are a great place to begin. With a brief synopsis of Dr. McGee's teaching and helpful questions for discussion, they've got all you need to guide a group through God's word with clarity and confidence. You should try it. For more information, just visit ttb.org or call 1-800-65-Bible. I'm Steve Schwetz, and I'll see you next time on the Bible bus.

[ 25m24s ] Jesus made it all. To him I own. Sin had left the crimson stay. He washed it white as snow.

[ 25m49s ] Thru the Bible is a five-year study of God's entire word, and together we discover God's purposes in history and our lives, found only when we believe in Jesus Christ. Do you know him yet?