Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Connect with Skip Heizig. We're glad you've joined
us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heidzig exist to
connect you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
times through verse by verse teaching of His Word. That's
why we make messages like this one today available to
you and others on air and online. Before we kick
off today's teaching, we want to let you know that
(00:22):
you can stay in the know about what's happening at
Connect with Skip Heitzig when you sign up for email updates.
When you do, you'll also receive Skip's weekly devotional email
to inspire you with God's Word each week. So sign
up today at connectiskip dot com. That's Connect with Skip
dot com. Now let's get into today's teaching with pastor
(00:43):
Skip Heitzig.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
What is a mandreake technical term Mandragoras autumnolis. What it
was was a perennial fruit that grows in the Mediterranean regions,
bluish flowers in the winter, dark green leaves, and a
yellow plumelike yellowish fruit in the summer. It also had
(01:08):
a root. It was a carrot like root, and the belief,
the superstitious belief, is that it was an aphrodisiac. It
increased sexual appetite, and it opened the womb, enabling barren
women to conceive. It did not. It was simply superstitious.
(01:29):
She's following the superstitions of her time, trying to get
more children. When Jacob came out of the field in
the evening, Now he had no idea what's happening. He's
a hard days working. He comes in and the yawns
in the tent, wants to grab the Jerusalem Post and
(01:50):
sit down and read the paper. Jacob came out of
the field in the evening. Leah went out to meet
him and said, you must come into me, for I
have surely hired you with my son's mandrakes. I told
you it was a weird chapter. And he lay with
her that night. Interesting, it's as though she's believing this ideology. Well,
(02:19):
God hasn't helped me and my husband. He's not helping
me any so maybe these mandrakes will help. Also, they
were called love apples. You know, I've trusted in the Lord.
Where has that got me? Now, that's same philosophy I've
heard over and over again on a number of different levels. Well,
(02:42):
God isn't doing anything, So I guess I have to
help God out. It's what Abraham and Sarah thought with Hagar,
that's what she is thinking. So and he lay with
her that night verse sixteen. Their marriage had been reduced
to a legal contract. And God listened to Leah. Evidently,
(03:04):
then means she had prayed, and she conceived and bore
Jacob a fifth son. Now, the writer Moses of Genesis
wants you to know that it's because God did it
that they had the child. God listened to the prayer
and gave her another son. And Leah said, God has
given me my wages because I have given my maid
(03:26):
to my husband. And so she called his name Isakar,
which means hired or for sale. And Leah conceived again
and bore Jacob a sixth son. And Leah said, God
has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my husband
will dwell with me because I've borne him six sons.
(03:48):
And so she called his name Zebulen, which means to dwell. Afterwards,
she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah, which
means judgment. It was very difficult to be a woman
in those days. Here's just a little insight. When a
woman was about to give birth. They brought in the
food and the singers and the wine, and they are
(04:10):
already to party hardy. If a boy was born, if
a girl came out, well congratulations, But pack up the
wine and the party attire, and we'll see you next time.
She's competing with her sister. She now has six to zero.
(04:30):
That's the score six and oh, and she has a daughter.
The daughter is mentioned, but her name is judgment. Verse
twenty two was a highlight. Then God remembered Rachel. God
listened to her and opened her womb. So after the
(04:53):
mandrake madness was over, that didn't work, but prayer dead.
She's trust in the Lord. She's leaning on him, and
the Lord opened up her womb. She conceived and bore
a son, and said, God has taken away my reproach.
And so she called his name Joseph, which means to add,
(05:14):
and said, the Lord shall add to me another son.
Now Joseph will get to later. He dominates the last
eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis. He is the
one who is sold out of jealousy by his brothers
into Egypt. He is in Potiphar's house. He will eventually
(05:35):
become a ruler in Egypt, in fact the prime Minister
and deliver the world from a famine. But his name
is interesting because it really is a prophecy. The Lord
will add to me yet another son. She's going to
have two children. The second son will be Benjamin, but
he won't come around for a while. But Joseph, her
(05:56):
one and only up to now son, is born by
natural childbirth. So so far, it's a sad picture. It's
a dysfunctional family. It's a family that never learned how
to resolve conflict, and children were placed in the middle
of adults who are at war with each other. Now,
(06:21):
I want you just to think for a moment about
how couples resolve conflict, and people do it different ways.
Some people resolve conflict by not resolving conflict. They'd never
deal with it, don't want to talk about it, and
they give the cold shoulder to the mate, honey, what's wrong? Nothing?
(06:47):
It seems like, oh, no, nothing wrong. Why do you ask?
Oh but honey, you know, And it's awfully hard to
snuggle a bobcat. But that's how many will try to
resolve it, just by not resolving it, don't deal with it,
don't talk about it, but it's still lying there. Other
(07:12):
people deal with conflict by just kind of letting it simmer.
They'll be very passive of every They just let it simmer,
and then simmer's a little more and a little more,
until eventually they can't control it and they blow up
like a volcano and take half the house with them.
Others place their children in the middle of their conflict.
(07:37):
If that ever happens, Please don't be surprised if your
children grow up to handle conflict exactly the same way
it's been modeled to them. Use your children like these
two gals as weapons. That's a mistake, pitting one against
the other. I see husbands and wives using their children
(07:59):
as weapons, especially if there's a divorce. Other parents worship
their children, alienating their spouse. Is now all about the child,
all about the baby, all about that child and the
whole life. So what happens is when the empty nest
(08:21):
comes around. They're so used to neglecting the spouse and
not nurturing that relationship, and it's all about child centered parenting.
Once the child leaves the home, they look at each
other and say, now, who are you and why should
I remain with you? Give me a good reason. The
best way to resolve conflict is to sit down, look
(08:44):
at each other in the eye, get a mediator if
need be, a counselor pastor, if need be, somebody's skilled
at biblical counseling. But put your heart on the table
and deal honestly, and be submissive to the Lord's will,
and ask for forgiveness, and then move on. Jacob did
(09:05):
none of that in his family, and neither did these
two gals. And you'll see their children as they grow.
Enough said the second part of this chapter, and we
want to go quickly. Is the workplace he works for
Uncle Laban. Now watch what happens. It came to pass
when Rachel had borne Joseph that Jacob said to Laban,
(09:25):
send me away, that I may go to my own
place and my own country. Give me my wives and
my children for whom I have served you, and let
me go. For you know my service and what I
have done for you. You bet you fourteen years of
that service. And Laban said to him, please stay if
(09:48):
I have found favor in your eyes, for I have
learned by experience that the Lord has blessed me for
your sake. Then he said, name your wages, and I
will give it. See the word experience on some of
the modern translations rightfully translated divination, for I have learned
(10:13):
by divination that the reason I am so blessed is
because you're here. That is more accurate. Laban was also
superstitious the idea that omens and signs would predict a future,
because the pagan belief is that evil forces control the world,
(10:36):
not a sovereign God. Now he uses God's name because
he's clever. The Lord has blessed me, yahweh is the
Word has blessed me because of you. But don't be
fooled by this cat. He's not interested at all in
Jacob's God, only the blessings that will come from Jacob's God. Stay, dude,
(11:02):
I feel so much better when you're around because he
was blessed because of his sake. It's a beautiful principle,
and it's a promise. God had promised Abraham that the
descendants of Abraham would be the source of blessing to
the world. Through you and your offspring, all the families
of the earth shall be blessed. And it's wonderful when
(11:25):
God blesses other people because of you. It's a wonderful thought,
is it not, that you could be the reason that
other people get blessed? Well, it happened with Isaac. Isaac
went down to Garar, and King of Bimelech of Gharar
realized that God blessed him, the king of Garar, because
(11:46):
of Isaac. Later on chapter forty forty one, Joseph will
be down in Potiphar's house in Egypt, and Potiphar will
be blessed for Joseph's sake. Laban realises that's happened to him.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig before we return
to Skip's teaching. If you've ever wondered what the Bible
has to say about some of our culture's big issues,
we have a great resource for you. When you give
a gift of fifty dollars or more this month to
support the ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send
you God Speaks Biblical answers for today's issues. This special
(12:24):
resource bundle contains six of Pastor Skipp's booklets that address
topics like suicide, why the Truth matters, Heaven and Hell,
and the Church's response to racism. You'll gain valuable insight
into what God's word says about the big questions in
our culture, and get equipped to stand for the timeless
truth of Scripture. Go to connect with Skip dot com
(12:45):
slash offer or call eight hundred ninety two to two
eighteen eighty eight and request your copy when you give
fifty dollars or more. Now let's get back to Skip
for more of today's teaching.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Jacob said to him verse twenty nine. You know how
I've served you, and your livestock has been with me.
For what you had before I came was little, and
it has increased to a great amount. The Lord has
blessed you since my coming. And now when shall I
(13:19):
also provide for my own house? And he said, what
shall I give you? And Jacob said, you shall not
give me anything. If you will do this thing for me,
I will again feed and keep your flocks. Let me
pass through all of your flock today, removing from there
all the speckled and spotted sheep, all the brown ones
(13:40):
among the lambs, and the spotted and speckled among the goats.
And these shall be my wages. So my righteousness will
answer for me in time to come, when the subject
of my wages comes before you. Everyone that is not
speckled and spot among the goats and brown among the
(14:03):
lambs will be considered stolen if it is with me.
And Laban said, oh that it were according to your word.
Now that means I don't know if I can trust
you or not. You have one con artist facing another
con artist, and they don't trust each other. Now, what's
(14:23):
the deal. Here, here's the deal. Jacob is basically seeing
Laban all of the pure bred blue ribbon stock, the best,
they're yours. Your flocks have increased because of me, but
the best should be yours. I'll take the leftovers. All
I want is the opportunity to build my own flock.
(14:43):
So verse thirty five. He removed that day the male
goats that were speckled and spotted, all the female goats
that were speckled and spotted, everyone that had some white
in it, and all the brown ones among the lambs,
and gave them into the hand of his sons. Now
Laban takes the lambs, Jacob said he wanted. He takes them,
gives them to his sons, and he puts three days
(15:05):
journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob fed the rest
of Laban's flock. So here's what's happening. Laban doesn't trust Jacob,
takes the ones he said he wanted, puts him in
a flock by himself, and separates them so that at
any time Laban could go check on that flock to
make sure that Jacob hadn't stolen any others. To add
(15:27):
to it, he doesn't trust him. He's keeping a close
eye on him. Now, Jacob took for himself verse thirty seven.
Here's if you thought it was weird up till now,
it gets even weirder. Jacob took for himself rods of
green poplar and of almonds and chestnut trees, peeled white
(15:49):
strips in them, and exposed the white which was in
the rods, and the rods which he had peeled. He
set before the flocks in the gutters, that is, the
feeding troughs or the drinking troughs, in the watering troughs,
where the flocks came to drink, so that they should
conceive when they come to drink. So the flocks conceive
(16:11):
before the rods, and the flocks brought forth streaked, speckled,
and spotted. Now you're thinking, by now, what on Earth
is going on, And I have to say I'm not
quite sure. Some and there's different explanations for this. This
(16:36):
think it's a selective breeding process, whereby he's keeping tallies
with them, with these different rods that have markings on them,
so selectively he could breed them. But most people think
that just like the mandrakes were superstitious for Rachel, these
rods are superstitious for Jacob. They did nothing at all,
(17:00):
but it was based upon the superstition that the embryo
within a female would be affected by whatever the female
sees at the time of and after in the initial
stages after conception. That was their belief. If they saw
(17:21):
something weird, it's going to affect the outcome. It was
had nothing at all to do with the outcome. God
was in control, just like he was in control of
human gestation, he's in control of blessing the flock. Here's
the result. Jacob separated the lambs, made the flocks face
(17:41):
toward the street and the brown and the flock of Laban.
But he put his own flocks by themselves and did
not put them with Laban's flock. And it came to
pass whenever the stronger livestock conceived that Jacob placed the
rods before the eyes of the livestock and the gutters
that they might conceive among the rods. But when the
flocks were feeble, he did not put them in. So
(18:04):
the feebler were Laban's and the stronger were Jacob's. Thus
the man became exceedingly prosperous and had large flocks, female
and male servants, and camels and donkeys. There's something you
should know, and I think this is one of the
reasons it's here. There's a play on words in the
(18:25):
original Hebrew, I'm told by the commentators. Do you remember
back when we talked about Esau and the alternate name.
He was given the name of Edom, which means red,
And there was a play on words that with red
stew old man read had his blessing taken from him.
(18:46):
It's a play on words. The word Laban means white,
so there's a play on words with the white that's
on the shafts or the rods of these pieces of wood,
and Laban himself, as if to say, old whitey got
(19:06):
out smarted, and God added to his flocks and strengthened
the flock of Jacob, and it was God doing it.
Regardless of what Jacob did or didn't do, God added
to the flock. How do I know that because in
chapter twenty eight, the Lord appears to Jacob when he's
(19:28):
on the way to Uncle Laban's and he said, I
want you to know something, Jacob, I am the God
who is gonna bless you. I'm gonna be with you
wherever you go, and I'm gonna bless you, and You're
gonna be a blessing to others. So God is simply
doing what God promised before he got there that he
would do. He's blessing him, blessed him with many children,
(19:48):
and now he is increasing and strengthening his flock. Let's
bring it to a close and see how this fits
into communion. This guy's home life was an utter mess,
his work situation and utter mess. But in the midst
(20:08):
of that mess, God superimposed his will and brought a
great blessing. Out of what you might call the worst
family came the best blessing. And what was the best
blessing the Jewish nation that brought forth the Messiah. To
fulfill the promise in you, all the nations of the
(20:29):
earth will be blessed Why would God ever bless these folk?
These are weirdos, eating mandrakes and pulling stuff off of
sticks and all of this trickery and canivy what a
horrible family get. God blesses the most unlikely, and we'll
(20:53):
take the very worst and often make the very best
out of it. And the prime example is the Cross.
The worst event in human history from a human perspective
would be killing God. From any perspective, killing God doing
away with God, that's a tragedy. That's horrible. Yes, it
(21:17):
was a travesty of justice. It was a breach of justice.
But God was behind the scenes working it all out.
Because of the death of his son, he could save
human beings who believe in him. There's a philosopher from
Boston College named Peter Crieft who puts it this way.
(21:38):
Suppose you're the devil. I know that's going to be
hard for some of you to imagine it, for some
others maybe not so hard. Suppose you're the devil, You're
the enemy of God and you want to kill him,
but you can't. However, he has this ridiculous weakness of
creating and loving human beings whom you can get at
(22:00):
Aha now you've got hostages. So you simply come down
into the world, corrupt humankind and drags some of them
to hell. When God sends prophets to enlighten them, you
kill the prophets. Then God does the most foolish thing
of all. He sends his own son, and he plays
(22:23):
by the rules of the world. You say to yourself,
I can't believe he's that stupid. Love must have addled
his brains. All I have to do is inspire some
of my agents, like Herod Punches Pilot Caiaphas and the
Roman soldiers and get him crucified. And that's what you do.
(22:47):
And so there he hangs on the cross, forsaken by
man and seemingly forsaken by God, bleeding to death and
crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
What do you feel now? As the devil? You feel triumph,
(23:10):
you feel vindication. But of course you couldn't be more wrong.
This is his supreme triumph and your supreme defeat. He
has struck his heel into your mouth. You bit it,
and that blood has destroyed you. The very worst thing
(23:33):
in history became the very best thing in history. Now,
if that is true with the Cross. Couldn't that be
true with lesser tragedies. I want you to think tonight
about your own life. You might have a very difficult
home life. You may have a very difficult work environment,
(23:55):
and maybe you're tempted, like Rachel and like Jacob to
sort of descend to the law level and get legitimate
needs met at an illegitimate source. That's idolatry. By the way,
it's the meaning of idolatry, getting your needs met and
an unauthorized, illegitimate source. Instead of saying, in the midst
(24:19):
of this mess, oh Lord, redeem it and make it
something wonderful, shape my life, my children's life for your glory.
He did it at the cross, and he can do
it in your life and mind.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember
that when you give fifty dollars or more to help
reach more people with the Gospel through connect with Skip Heitzig,
we'll send you God Speaks Biblical Answers for Today's Issues,
which contain six of Pastor Skip's booklets to help you
understand what the Bible says about big issues like racism,
the importance of truth, suicide, and heaven and Hell. To
(24:59):
request your copy of God Speaks Biblical Answers for today's issues,
call eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight. That's
eight hundred ninety two two eighteen eighty eight, or visit
connect with skip dot com slash donate for more from Skiff.
Be sure to check out the many resources available at
connectwiskip dot com slash store. Come back next time for
(25:23):
more verse by verse teaching of God's Word. Here on.
Connect with skip Heidzig.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Make It Connect, make a Connect The cross chat song
song makes Next.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Connect with skip Heidzig is a presentation of connection communications
connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
times