Choosing Leah
February 21, 2010 – Mary Scheer, Brewster Baptist Church
Eph. 1:11-14
Have you have been watching the Olympics? It seems like competition has been dominating tv these days. Some of the competition shows on tv include, America’s Next Top Model, Dancing With The Stars, Project Runway, America’s Best Dance Crew, The Amazing Race, The Biggest Loser, Top Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, So You Think You Can Dance, Do You Duet and so many others. Recently we had the super bowl, American Idol, the Olympics, even politics. We’re obsessed with competition and everyone wants to be a winner.
[powerpress]Have you ever competed for something that you didn’t win at? Did you ever try out for something and not make it? Have you ever worked hard for something and despite your best efforts, someone else was chosen instead of you?
Week after week on American Idol contestants are dismissed and they always protest saying, “you have to let me stay, give me one more chance, you don’t understand, this is my dream!” In some ways, each of them knows what it feels like to be Leah who was in a life long competition. But she comes later in our story.
Our story starts with Jacob who was Abrahams Grandson. One day after Jacob and his twin brother, Esau had a fight and a parting of ways, Jacob headed out east to find a wife. (Gen. 28:6-9) When he arrived in Aram, he came to a well and saw some sheep and goats laying next to it waiting for a drink. But a heavy stone covered the mouth of the well. It was the custom of the folks there to wait for all the flocks to arrive before removing the stone to water the animals. While waiting Jacob was talking with some of the town folks and asked if they knew a man named Laban (who was his uncle) and they said yes, in fact, here comes his daughter Rachel with her father’s flock, she was a shepherd.
The story says that when Jacob saw Rachel, he went over to the well and single handedly moved the large stone, because she was his cousin and because she had his uncles flock to water. It also hints at the fact that he could have had other motives, since she was very beautiful. Then Jacob went over to Rachel and kissed her and wept aloud, telling her that he was her cousin, the son of her aunt Rebekah. So, Rachel ran and told her dad who came quickly to meet Jacob. After Jacob stayed with Laban for a month, Laban said to him, “You shouldn’t work for me without pay just because we’re relatives. Tell me how much your wages should be.”
Now Laban had two daughters. The older daughter was named Leah, and the younger one was Rachel. The bible says that Leah, whose name means “wild cow” had weak eyes. Some interpreters think that means there was no sparkle there, nothing to look at, others think the word weak there in Hebrew means delicate or tender, and refers more to her character than her actual looks. When it comes to Rachel, the bible is clear about her looks, saying she had a beautiful figure and a lovely face! It was love at first sight for Jacob and he told her father, “I’ll work for you for seven years if you’ll give me Rachel, your younger daughter, as my wife.” “Agreed! Laban replied. I’d rather give her to you than to anyone else.” So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel, but his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days!
Finally, the time came for the wedding. “I have fulfilled my agreement,” Jacob said to Laban, “Now give me my wife so I can marry her.” So Laban invited everyone in the neighborhood and they had a big feast. But that night, after a day of eating…and drinking…when it was dark…Laban swapped brides and sent in a veiled Leah to spend the wedding night with Jacob. When Jacob woke up in the morning to discover it was Leah, he was furious and yelled at Laban, “I worked for you for seven years for Rachel, why have you tricked me?” Jacob, the deceiver who had earlier tricked his own brother out of his birthright, had been outwitted by his uncle. Laban said, “It’s not our custom to marry off a younger daughter ahead of the firstborn.” “If you wait until the bridal week is over, then I’ll give you Rachel, too, if you agree to work another seven years for her.” So, Jacob agreed to work seven more years. A week after he was married to Leah, he was given Rachel too. The brides also came with their maids, Zilpah and Bilhah. And the Bible says that Jacob loved Rachel and not Leah. (Gen. 29:31)
Rachel and Leah shared two things in common, they were sisters and they were married to the same man, not the best ingredients for a happy marriage. Apart from that, life was very different for the two of them. Rachel was the beautiful one chosen and loved by Jacob, the winner of his affection. Leah, by the Bible’s account, wasn’t as pretty, had been deceived by her father, pitted against her sister and was unchosen and unloved by her husband. So, when the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he enabled her to have children, but Rachel could not conceive.
Although Rachel had the looks and the husband, she couldn’t have children. Any family who’s tried and been unable to have children can identify with the sadness and frustration Rachel was feeling, especially when it seemed like Leah had another baby every time she turned around. Both sisters had something the other wanted.
But having babies wasn’t enough for Leah; her desperate striving for Jacob’s love is told through the names of her children. Her first son she named Reuben, which in Hebrew sounds like “he has seen my misery,” and she said, “Surely my husband will love me now.” How many women have hoped their children would help bond them closer to their husbands or help save their marriages?
Anyone who’s experienced the frustration of trying to win someone’s love by what they could offer them knows her desperation. Two son’s later, she gave birth to Levi, whose name in Hebrew means “attached,” and she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me.” Love wasn’t even the primary goal any more; she was willing to settle for attachment. She just wants to feel a connection. Then when son number six came along she named him Zebulun, meaning Honor, saying this time my husband will show me some honor. (30:20) By saying, “this time” she indicates that even after giving Jacob 5 sons she did didn’t feel honored or respected by her husband and she was hoping this 6th son would do it.
Leah’s children’s names also reveal her faith that God saw her pain. The Psalmist agrees; “But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.” (Ps. 10:14) This couldn’t have been the life Leah had hoped for. Where could she go for love and support, to her father who swapped her for Rachel so he could keep dangling the Rachel carrot out in front of Jacob, to get another 7 years of labor out of him? She doesn’t even have the honor that she would normally get for being the oldest, the first wife and the mother of so many sons! And just when you think things can’t get worse she has to ask Rachel, her younger sister if she can spend a night with her husband. Leah’s son found a mandrake plant during the wheat harvest, which Leah used to trade for an extra night with Jacob. The childless Rachel agreed to the trade because mandrakes (also called love apples) were thought to increase fertility. Then, Leah ran out to the field to meet Jacob yelling, “You have to spend the night with me, because I hired you for a mandrake.” (30:16) Can you just picture Leah running through the fields waving her arms, yelling to Jacob in front of all the field hands that she had bought him for a night.
The fact that being with her wasn’t Jacob’s choice and that she had to get permission from her younger sister, and that she had to trade something for time with him paints a painful picture. Leah got pregnant again and named this son Issachar, meaning bartered.
Have you ever watched someone in a strained relationship sink to greater and greater depths of humiliation in their desperate attempt to make someone love them?
I know a young woman who is desperately trying to win the love and affection of a man who treats her very badly. With every cruel act or dismissive gesture on his part, she reacts by giving away more of herself, her dreams and goals, pushing away friends and family, even trading in self esteem for a shot at his love.
No matter how many children Leah had, they don’t seem to help the cry of her heart to be loved by her husband. Gen. 29:30 says very clearly that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah. Not only is she not feeling loved by her husband, but the closeness and support she might have otherwise enjoyed with her sister was tangled in competition. While Rachel was still childless, she gave her maid, Bilhah to Jacob as a wife and she had a child that Rachel named Dan, meaning “vindication,” and said, “God took my side and vindicated me.” He listened to me and gave me a son.” Then Bilhah had another son that Rachel named Naphtali meaning “fight” saying, “I’ve been in an all-out fight with my sister and I’ve won.” Naming her sons “vindication” and “fight” is a pretty good illustration of the level of jealousy and competition between the sisters.
We were made for love, to give love and to be loved. Feeling unnoticed, overlooked and unloved can lead to unspeakable pain that can cause us to search for love in the wrong places and in the wrong way. In this “you either have ‘it’ or you don’t world,” there are many people like Leah are living in the “loved less” group, folks who know what it feels like to do everything they can, to try their hardest and still come up short against Rachel. There are folks who have been abandoned by parents when they were children or as adults, orphaned and homeless children all over the world waiting for someone to choose them, folks exhausted by a lifetime of family competition and those who’ve been abused, left out, overlooked and unchosen. Perhaps you know someone who’s feeling like that.
I wonder if Leah ever gave up trying to get Jacob’s love. It seems she was at peace for a while, when she named one son Judah, saying, “This time I will praise the Lord.” The story doesn’t tell us how Leah’s relationship with Jacob played out but a look back at history reveals things that Leah couldn’t have predicted.
According to Matthew, the birth of Jesus, born of Mary, who was married to Joseph, was some 38 generations earlier born through the line of Leah’s son Judah. Leah was the mother of six of the twelve sons of Jacob who became the twelve tribes of Israel. And when Jacob was on his death bed, he asked Joseph, Rachel’s oldest son, to carry his body back from Egypt to Canaan and bury him next to…not Rachel, but Leah! Rachel died along side a road near Bethlehem and was buried right there. But Leah, she is resting next to Jacob, along with his parents Isaac and Rebekah and his grandparents Abraham and Sarah. Jacob may have chosen Rachel, but God had chosen Leah.
Is there a Jacob in your life? Is there someone or some situation that leaves you feeling unappreciated? Have you ever found yourself walking in the shadows of Rachel, whose light shines so brightly that yours is hardly noticed?
The good news is that there is one who notices us, who longs for us to comprehend his love. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!” (1 John 3:1)
God calls us his beloved, his chosen ones.
SERMON TEXT (Eph 1:11-14): “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” (Eph. 1:11-14)
No matter what else happens in our lives God’s love is certain.
In his love through Christ we are chosen, marked with a seal which is the promise of the Holy Spirit, and assured an eternal inheritance for the praise of his glory.
Entertainer Garrison Keilor recalls the childhood pain of being chosen last for the baseball teams. The captains are down to their last grudging choices: a slow kid for catcher, someone to stick out in right field where nobody hits it. They choose the last ones two at a time—”you and you”—because it makes no difference. And the remaining kids—the scrubs , the excess—they deal for us as handicaps. “If I take him, then you gotta take him,” they say. Sometimes I go as high as sixth, usually lower. But just once I’d like Darrel to pick me first and say, “Him! I want him! The skinny kid with the glasses and the black shoes. You, c’mon!” But I’ve never been chosen with much enthusiasm. Did you ever think about the fact that you are so valuable to God he chose you early—with enthusiasm. “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight”[1]
Listen to Ephesians, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.” (Eph 1:3-5 NLT)
In this competitive world, may you always know how special you are. Even before the world was made you were loved and chosen by God. And in him, we are all already winners.
May we continue to seek the God who is always seeking us. May we be able to experience and understand the height, depth and width of his love for us and may we grasp what it means to be called his chosen ones, for in that we are blessed.
LET’S PRAY:
Dear Lord, I pray for everyone who knows the pain of feeling like they’ve been left on the sidelines, unchosen, for those who’ve stood in Leah’s shoes feeling unappreciated and disrespected by those they love. We pray for those who feel like they’re chasing Jacob, and have tried everything they know how to try even giving away their own hopes and dreams, for all who feel like their light is drowned out by the flashy brightness of Rachel. Lord, forgive us if we have been jealous or competitive toward someone else. Help us to be encouragers to those around us. I pray for all of us that no matter what’s going on in our lives today, we would be able to experience in a fresh way, your love for us and the joy that comes with the knowledge that you chose us, that we would be able to hear you whisper to us, “beloved, I have chosen you, I call you by your name, you are mine.” And that we would sense the safety and security we have in you promising to never leave us or fail us. In Jesus Name. Amen.
BLESSING: 1 Peter 2:9-10
Peter said to the church, “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10)
[1] Van Morris, Shepherdsville, Kentucky; source: Robert Russell, The Southeast Christian Church Outlook (6-8-00), Louisville, Kentucky