The Chaos That Tries To Stop The Gospel
Memory Verse: 'If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. '
Galatians 5:25
Sermon Sentence: There is not a force of chaos that is capable of stopping the message of the Gospel.
Galatians 5:25
Sermon Sentence: There is not a force of chaos that is capable of stopping the message of the Gospel.
Day 1
Read Genesis 29:31-35
Today, let's think about Leah.
That is not a lot of reading. You probably brushed it off in a matter of seconds, but my goodness there are a lot of feelings in that section! Why not do it the justice the story deserves and just sit thinking about it all for a while. Read it again. Read it three times. She is not a crazy lady that just can’t get it together. Hear her story from her perspective and your heart should shatter. I truly found myself tearing up reading this and trying to do the same thing. Leah felt hated. She seemed to grow up her whole life in that comparison with her sister.
When she finally felt like she had experienced what she thought she needed to not feel hated, rather than accepting that blessing from the hand of God, she turned it around and hoped that she could get the affection she desired from her husband. The husband that didn’t want her. Can you imagine what she is carrying? Have you not seen children (or even the grown ups) that long for the love from the person that just does not seem to love them? They are incapable of seeing the love that is coming their way, the love of God. And even when they get it, they use that gift as a prop to garnish the love that they think they need more than anything. Imagine, she received the love of God and turned it to try to get a smaller version of the very thing God gave her. This is so sad and breaks my heart to imagine.
Look at the names of each kid and what it means. What do you learn about what Leah is feeling with each birth?
How have you experienced something in your life like this?
How have you walked with someone else that was struggling with feeling loved?
How does this become part of your prayer today?
Today, let's think about Leah.
That is not a lot of reading. You probably brushed it off in a matter of seconds, but my goodness there are a lot of feelings in that section! Why not do it the justice the story deserves and just sit thinking about it all for a while. Read it again. Read it three times. She is not a crazy lady that just can’t get it together. Hear her story from her perspective and your heart should shatter. I truly found myself tearing up reading this and trying to do the same thing. Leah felt hated. She seemed to grow up her whole life in that comparison with her sister.
When she finally felt like she had experienced what she thought she needed to not feel hated, rather than accepting that blessing from the hand of God, she turned it around and hoped that she could get the affection she desired from her husband. The husband that didn’t want her. Can you imagine what she is carrying? Have you not seen children (or even the grown ups) that long for the love from the person that just does not seem to love them? They are incapable of seeing the love that is coming their way, the love of God. And even when they get it, they use that gift as a prop to garnish the love that they think they need more than anything. Imagine, she received the love of God and turned it to try to get a smaller version of the very thing God gave her. This is so sad and breaks my heart to imagine.
Look at the names of each kid and what it means. What do you learn about what Leah is feeling with each birth?
How have you experienced something in your life like this?
How have you walked with someone else that was struggling with feeling loved?
How does this become part of your prayer today?
Day 2
Read Genesis 30:1-8
Today, let's think about Rachel.
Rachel’s is a jealousy that seems to stink more than Leah’s. I am not saying one is the hero and the other is the villain, real life just never seems to be that cut and dry. One day I wake up as the villain and one day I wake up as a version of a hero. But Rachel is the favored woman that at least has what the other women seem to long for. That is too simple for this story, but you get what I mean? She is not struggling for her husband’s attention, so it is so much easier for Leah to look at her and live in frustration at what she just doesn’t seem to understand. If you followed me in that logic, you fell into the trap. Rachel had what Leah wanted, but Rachel did not have all that she wanted. The struggle of barrenness is a theme that runs in the Bible at a ridiculous repetition. As we talked about in the sermon, that struggle goes back to the Genesis 3 story of the fall in the Garden.
Feelings are strange things to sort through. When we don’t have what we want and we can’t do anything about it, there is an anger that rises up. It is hurt, but it feels so much like anger because it has nowhere to go. So the sadness, the hurt, bursts out of our hearts and it burns somewhere. Rachel was hurting. She was jealous. And as the temperature grew and grew on that, the only logical thing she could come up with was to blame her husband. That is not logical, but you do understand that hurt and sadness has a way of growing its own logic? Jacob, as we will discuss more tomorrow, protects himself from the faulty logic with anger. That is the problem, the sadness in Rachel still needs to go somewhere, because she is not going to be able to process it. The distorted logic grows a new limb and the ideas start to get really weird. Maybe if Jacob has a child with the servant, we can count the point as a salve for Rachel’s pain? Left turns never seem to solve chaotic reality.
Have you ever experienced barrenness as a wife or even a husband walking with a wife through the struggle? What was that like and where did you see versions of these feelings in that situation?
How have you experienced sadness that landed in misplaced anger as a way to deal with what you were feeling?
How do you see this in your life today and how can you walk through it?
How does this become part of your prayer today?
Today, let's think about Rachel.
Rachel’s is a jealousy that seems to stink more than Leah’s. I am not saying one is the hero and the other is the villain, real life just never seems to be that cut and dry. One day I wake up as the villain and one day I wake up as a version of a hero. But Rachel is the favored woman that at least has what the other women seem to long for. That is too simple for this story, but you get what I mean? She is not struggling for her husband’s attention, so it is so much easier for Leah to look at her and live in frustration at what she just doesn’t seem to understand. If you followed me in that logic, you fell into the trap. Rachel had what Leah wanted, but Rachel did not have all that she wanted. The struggle of barrenness is a theme that runs in the Bible at a ridiculous repetition. As we talked about in the sermon, that struggle goes back to the Genesis 3 story of the fall in the Garden.
Feelings are strange things to sort through. When we don’t have what we want and we can’t do anything about it, there is an anger that rises up. It is hurt, but it feels so much like anger because it has nowhere to go. So the sadness, the hurt, bursts out of our hearts and it burns somewhere. Rachel was hurting. She was jealous. And as the temperature grew and grew on that, the only logical thing she could come up with was to blame her husband. That is not logical, but you do understand that hurt and sadness has a way of growing its own logic? Jacob, as we will discuss more tomorrow, protects himself from the faulty logic with anger. That is the problem, the sadness in Rachel still needs to go somewhere, because she is not going to be able to process it. The distorted logic grows a new limb and the ideas start to get really weird. Maybe if Jacob has a child with the servant, we can count the point as a salve for Rachel’s pain? Left turns never seem to solve chaotic reality.
Have you ever experienced barrenness as a wife or even a husband walking with a wife through the struggle? What was that like and where did you see versions of these feelings in that situation?
How have you experienced sadness that landed in misplaced anger as a way to deal with what you were feeling?
How do you see this in your life today and how can you walk through it?
How does this become part of your prayer today?
Day 3
Read Genesis 30:1-8
Today let’s think about Jacob.
By the time we get to this part of the story, who really wants to empathize with Jacob? He seems to be the villain and whatever comes to him he has earned. Even in these stories of this unhealthy battle between two sisters vying for his attention and meaning in life, he goes along with a stupid plan that just involves him being a selfish man that seems to take advantage of his own desires. I won’t go into detail in this devotion, but I think we could all agree a marriage that is open and structured like this is definitely nowhere near healthy. If you take the approach of thinking that each person has to make the decision in their situations of what is good in a marriage and what is not, I would challenge your wisdom or your understanding of how humanity is. Bottomline, this is stupid and full of unhealth.
That’s one side, and I dare not lean back the other direction in an attempt to justify Jacob’s choices that he clearly still had, but the feelings are something I have been near. Rachel, the love of his life, the woman that he worked 14 years just to be with, is hurting deeply because she can’t have children. And hurt people react. Most of the time when that reaction comes out, it is aimed in the wrong direction, because they don’t quite know how to feel. Did Rachel want a child desperately? Why would I argue otherwise? Did Jacob, even in the selfish way that he was, also not feel the debilitating pain of the woman he loves and wrestle with the feelings of not being able to provide would could make her happy? Surely. That is what love does. You can’t love and not feel. So when she turns on him in blame, that hits a place of hurt unlike anything else. Rachel, unable to know what to do with her feelings, lashes out at Jacob. Jacob hurting deeply for his wife and then finding himself attacked by her, lashes out in anger as well. Maybe the confusion in the hurt is what helps drive him to the foolishness of the set up. Either way, chaos has descended in everyone involved in this family.
Have you ever felt the attack of someone that was hurting and then turned in on you?
How did you react in that situation and how should you have reacted?
What do you learn from Jacob in this part of the story?
How does this become your prayer today?
Today let’s think about Jacob.
By the time we get to this part of the story, who really wants to empathize with Jacob? He seems to be the villain and whatever comes to him he has earned. Even in these stories of this unhealthy battle between two sisters vying for his attention and meaning in life, he goes along with a stupid plan that just involves him being a selfish man that seems to take advantage of his own desires. I won’t go into detail in this devotion, but I think we could all agree a marriage that is open and structured like this is definitely nowhere near healthy. If you take the approach of thinking that each person has to make the decision in their situations of what is good in a marriage and what is not, I would challenge your wisdom or your understanding of how humanity is. Bottomline, this is stupid and full of unhealth.
That’s one side, and I dare not lean back the other direction in an attempt to justify Jacob’s choices that he clearly still had, but the feelings are something I have been near. Rachel, the love of his life, the woman that he worked 14 years just to be with, is hurting deeply because she can’t have children. And hurt people react. Most of the time when that reaction comes out, it is aimed in the wrong direction, because they don’t quite know how to feel. Did Rachel want a child desperately? Why would I argue otherwise? Did Jacob, even in the selfish way that he was, also not feel the debilitating pain of the woman he loves and wrestle with the feelings of not being able to provide would could make her happy? Surely. That is what love does. You can’t love and not feel. So when she turns on him in blame, that hits a place of hurt unlike anything else. Rachel, unable to know what to do with her feelings, lashes out at Jacob. Jacob hurting deeply for his wife and then finding himself attacked by her, lashes out in anger as well. Maybe the confusion in the hurt is what helps drive him to the foolishness of the set up. Either way, chaos has descended in everyone involved in this family.
Have you ever felt the attack of someone that was hurting and then turned in on you?
How did you react in that situation and how should you have reacted?
What do you learn from Jacob in this part of the story?
How does this become your prayer today?
Day 4
Read Genesis 30:9-23
Today, let’s think about Zilpah and Bilhah.
So far, we have seen how Leah was the victim. Then we talked about how Rachel was the victim also, while victimizing others as well. Then we looked at how Jacob was a victim, even though it pains us to look at that. But today, we will consider the real victims in this situation. They are the casualties that don’t even have a real place in the story other than just being stepped on and tossed around. They are the ones that are used.
I think it is a valuable lesson to learn that chaos always has victims. The victims are us and them, but they are also way more than that. Until we realize the far reaching power and destruction of sin, which we have called chaos, the choices and the moves of the unwise, or that which did not come from the mouth of God, we will not be able to see the full impact of the stories happening around us. That's the sad reality of our lives and foolish choices, we probably don’t ever get the full picture of where the ripples went out. I have sat and talked to many, many children that have grown up in situations that had nothing to do with them, but rather were that of their parents or another relative, but now, years later they are sitting in the rocking boat of the waters that were poured from that chaos. The Bible gives a piece of the rest of the story of these ripples, but I have to wonder just how deep and life altering this pan played out for these two women who are mentioned only as sidebars in this story, Zilpah and Bilhah.
How have you been a victim in a chaos that you did not participate in or have a part in?
Why do you think the Bible does not talk more about the story of these two women?
How do you think God feels about all of this and where do you get that?
How does this become part of your prayer today?
Today, let’s think about Zilpah and Bilhah.
So far, we have seen how Leah was the victim. Then we talked about how Rachel was the victim also, while victimizing others as well. Then we looked at how Jacob was a victim, even though it pains us to look at that. But today, we will consider the real victims in this situation. They are the casualties that don’t even have a real place in the story other than just being stepped on and tossed around. They are the ones that are used.
I think it is a valuable lesson to learn that chaos always has victims. The victims are us and them, but they are also way more than that. Until we realize the far reaching power and destruction of sin, which we have called chaos, the choices and the moves of the unwise, or that which did not come from the mouth of God, we will not be able to see the full impact of the stories happening around us. That's the sad reality of our lives and foolish choices, we probably don’t ever get the full picture of where the ripples went out. I have sat and talked to many, many children that have grown up in situations that had nothing to do with them, but rather were that of their parents or another relative, but now, years later they are sitting in the rocking boat of the waters that were poured from that chaos. The Bible gives a piece of the rest of the story of these ripples, but I have to wonder just how deep and life altering this pan played out for these two women who are mentioned only as sidebars in this story, Zilpah and Bilhah.
How have you been a victim in a chaos that you did not participate in or have a part in?
Why do you think the Bible does not talk more about the story of these two women?
How do you think God feels about all of this and where do you get that?
How does this become part of your prayer today?
Day 5
Read Genesis 29:31-30:23
Today, let’s think about God’s perspective on this whole thing.
Let’s start with two statements that are completely true: 1. This is not God’s plan. 2. This is the avenue that God chooses to use to bring about the Gospel message to the world. Both of those can be true. In other words, God can use this situation without endorsing this situation. To me, that is the best news of this gut-wrenching and heartbreaking story. I would encourage you to notice that God has not given any instructions at all. The last time God spoke in this story was back in Bethel when Jacob was asleep. Since then, we have no reason to believe that God is encouraging or orchestrating any of this. So where is God in all of this? Now that is the incredible thing to realize!
He is not once encouraging any of the behavior, but He is hearing all of the hurt. This story is SO far removed from God’s will and ways, but God’s ear is not far away from it. He hears Leah when she feels hated, and He answers. He hears Rachel when she is pained, and He answers. God answering in these situations is not the same as God endorsing these situations. God’s answers are in the area of His blessings. Remember what the blessing is shown as? Life! So God blessed this family that is bent on destruction and chaos with more life. Is that really the best thing for them? Who would want to bring a baby into a chaotic, stupid mess like this? I get what you are saying and I am feeling the same things, but I also know the end of the story! I know that this plan, as strange as it is and as little as I can possibly explain it all, it ends in life…FOR EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES! So what is the lesson for those of us that are in chaos and wondering how all of this will come out? Trust God hears you. Trust God has a plan. Turn away from the chaos and turn towards Him! On the other side of trusting God is life!
How does this idea help you with where you are in your life today?
What is the big takeaway for you in this section of the story?
How does this become your prayer today?
Today, let’s think about God’s perspective on this whole thing.
Let’s start with two statements that are completely true: 1. This is not God’s plan. 2. This is the avenue that God chooses to use to bring about the Gospel message to the world. Both of those can be true. In other words, God can use this situation without endorsing this situation. To me, that is the best news of this gut-wrenching and heartbreaking story. I would encourage you to notice that God has not given any instructions at all. The last time God spoke in this story was back in Bethel when Jacob was asleep. Since then, we have no reason to believe that God is encouraging or orchestrating any of this. So where is God in all of this? Now that is the incredible thing to realize!
He is not once encouraging any of the behavior, but He is hearing all of the hurt. This story is SO far removed from God’s will and ways, but God’s ear is not far away from it. He hears Leah when she feels hated, and He answers. He hears Rachel when she is pained, and He answers. God answering in these situations is not the same as God endorsing these situations. God’s answers are in the area of His blessings. Remember what the blessing is shown as? Life! So God blessed this family that is bent on destruction and chaos with more life. Is that really the best thing for them? Who would want to bring a baby into a chaotic, stupid mess like this? I get what you are saying and I am feeling the same things, but I also know the end of the story! I know that this plan, as strange as it is and as little as I can possibly explain it all, it ends in life…FOR EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES! So what is the lesson for those of us that are in chaos and wondering how all of this will come out? Trust God hears you. Trust God has a plan. Turn away from the chaos and turn towards Him! On the other side of trusting God is life!
How does this idea help you with where you are in your life today?
What is the big takeaway for you in this section of the story?
How does this become your prayer today?
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