Leah [Part 2]

Pastor author and Bible teacher Alan Wright.

The greatest joy that you'll ever experience is tried all your idols and then find out that they're useless and futile and they come crashing down to the ground and you don't have anything left but God, and when you turn to him and you praise his name. You'll find that there's a joint visit these that comes in your life. It was unimaginable before, that's Pastor Alan welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life for no hold. I'm excited for you to hear the teaching today. In the series titled God used to and you may just be surprised as presented it right know the church in North Carolina.

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Contact us at pastor@an.org or call 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program but now let's get started with today's teaching here is Alan writing and so because the bride was heavily veiled and you wouldn't be able to see her face during the ceremony they thought that he might actually try to sneak Leah and and so Rachel and Jacob had spoken ahead of time and had a secret code word that Rachel was going to say to let Jacob know that it really was Rachel but so.

The midrash teaches that at the end. Rachel became compassionate for Leah and didn't want to subject her to disgrace and so she gave Leo the passcode and Leah uttered it to Jake up and that's why Jake was convinced that interesting.

I don't know exactly why the midrash would bring the teaching like that, except to say that it's a little easier to think of all of these people in the Bible and the people that are beloved in the history of Israel and is less dysfunctional him. He really are. But the real story is not nearly so neat is that it's horrible what happened. Father who actually takes his daughter, who we assume was in some sort of conspiracy with him.

Although maybe Leah felt she didn't have much choice in the matter not told my wife I said nothing. Leah was just as much a part of this trick is lame and my wife said no she wasn't she was made to do it so believe whichever way you want to but Leah is there and she's got a thick veil on and they have a big party and so scholars think part of this is Jacob has too much wine and with a thick veil and darkness.

He goes and he sleeps with the wrong woman and a course in that culture. Once you accept with the woman she most certainly was your life and there would be no undoing that and so the great trickster is tricked, the great deceiver is deceived and the irony is that Jacob thinks he can't be blessed and less heat tends to be Esau and Laban and maybe Leah think Leah can't be blessed unless she pretends to be Rachel novae and his family seems to be all to be him or herself. Nobody free enough to be who they are, for fear if found out who they really are. They would be rejected. Lying, working the angles is how Jacob has always lived and now it's worked against him. Oh how we reap what we sow. What irony. Now Jacob is given Rachel after he has a seven-day wedding party with Leah. Then he gets married to Rachel they have a party and he works another seven years and so Jacob has two wives, and such a thing might have been tolerated but it was never lifted up in Scripture as any ideal. In fact, see it, whether it be in Jacob's family or in the great number wives and Solomon would have it always works against them, so he has two wives.

He has his fantasy Rachel and he has his reality. Leah he has that which he loves and that which he doesn't love and Craig Barnes has a beautiful insight about this and says that in many ways. That's the way that we all are and our relationships, especially in marriage is that you marry someone you don't know everything about that person and then you wake up one day and you realize that though she might be. He might be 90% of what you love, you realize there's also 10% that you don't some things you don't like and down in the end, the danger is when you realize that the one you've married is both Rachel and Leah. The danger is Barnes says in his right that you can become so consumed and bothered by the 10% that you don't like that you spend very little time enjoying the 90% that you do like, so that you find out. Sometimes after many years that because you are so preoccupied with the 10% of Leah that you didn't like that you never really enjoyed Rachel nobody's perfect, and the beauty of what God does in our lives. It's so unlike human love is that God not being disillusioned because he knows everything about you. Love your whole being is mean that he approves of everything that doesn't mean that we approve of everything in one another. I don't really think there's anything wrong with wanting and hoping that the one that you love will grow and change in that sense. The problem is not so much that we would like those that we love to build a change and grow. The problem is the way in which we try to control them to make it happen. The shame that we use, or the withdrawal where so here's Leah in a marriage that was tricked and she is not love but she finds out that she is able to conceive children and Rachel's not and so it all begins. She starts having children, and the first child is named Ruben, which comes from the Hebrew word Iran, which is to see and Ben which means assign so Ruben rings look assign and she says the Lord has looked upon my affliction or my misery and given me the son look like she saying to Jacob assign I've given you assign and maybe now my husband will love me, but he doesn't. So, she labors again and she has Simeon this son whose name comes from the word Shema that means to hear and see says God has heard me and now maybe my husband will hear me maybe he'll love me now. I've given him a second son because I hated. She says the Lord gave this son to me. See what she saying she saying because of my misery because I'm not love. And she saying maybe my husband will now love me all of the focus and it's reflected in the names of her son is upon her own misery and upon her own situation and prolonging to receive the love of her husband but he still doesn't. And then she thinks maybe if I have 1/3 son. After all, some of the great patriarch snow and others had three sons. My husband maybe then will attach to me and so Levi was born.

His name means attached. Maybe he'll attach to me and has taught on this to the ladies before I think so beautifully thinking about this progression. It's like labor in the labor and then labor. This is Leah laboring for love. This is this is this is reflected in the names of these children. Ruben look at me, Simeon, hear me Levi be attached to me when you notice me when you listen to me when you connect with me and every child, she brought into the world she was thinking about her own misery.

She was thinking about her longing for the love of a husband who didn't know how to love her wouldn't love her couldn't love her labor labor. Labor and energy has 1/4 child. The problem that Leah had thinking if I change you love me if I produce another son love me if I labor one more time.

You love me. It is glaring, isn't it because what is love.

Love is something that is by definition a free gift that comes out of the one who loves and if you have found someone's attention because of something dazzling about you, then you have found attention, but you have not found love is a big difference between the two to be love because you become the image of someone else's fantasy is not to receive love and talent right will have more teaching moment. Today's important series. Glad you heard about it with you. You believed my experience it in the hybrid left, but not of myself as a love story from beginning to end spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bike. The Bible tells that this kind when you walk with Fremont Hispano met with a woman tasted the sweetness of God's love for you is pretty woman who searched for 25 inches long and fully Gary Chapman, Dr. the five love languages size incredible reality that God pursues us in life comes to lever of myself ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart except Christ proposal and showing his embrace raveling after the match made in heaven, lover of my soul. The gospel is shared when you get to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you get today. We will send you a special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our banks from Alan Wright Ministries, seven 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website past Rowan.work. Today's teaching now continues here once again is and we are in our culture so satisfied so superficially momentarily satisfied by mere attention there. Notice that that that the great thirst. It seems in our culture now is not so much for wealth as it is for fame, but people do for just a moment of having the attention of the world in a moment of fame, maybe thousands or even millions of people have their attention upon you and you satisfied a craving. But you've done nothing for your deep need for love, superficiality of a culture that craves attention to get all the attention of the world and be utterly and completely empty. Arthur Miller writing about his wife, Marilyn Monroe set on one particular night I was standing looking over her. I couldn't help but think I wish there was some miracle they can happen to her. What if she were wake up and I would say God loves you, darling. She could believe it. How I wish I still had my religion and she had hers he said I had no saving ministry to offer her. She was so hungry she was so needy.

She was so thirsty, but she didn't have the answer. Joe Marilyn Monroe in her diary two weeks before she took her life. She wrote I've given my life in search of limitless love and I've never found it in the attention of the whole world had no love that was Leah clamoring for the attention of her husband, but something happened. We don't know what but something changed inside of her before the fourth child was born were not told what the reason is for the shift with the fourth child was named Judah, which means praise the Lord is something in her shifted away from look at my misery.

Look how I hated I am maybe my husband will love me. Maybe there's an answer for me here on earth and instead something changed inside of her and the fourth son.

Maybe she just had relinquished all of her feeble attempts to try to get the satisfaction of knowing that her husband's attention was upon her and instead her whole heart began to turn in some way towards God maybe was just like what happens with us so often when we find ourselves exhausted. Having tried and tried and tried and it still didn't work.

And then in our emptiness in our weakness.

We find that God's strength is perfected and sometimes you will find out in your life. The greatest joy that you'll ever experience is tried all your idols and then find out that they're useless and futile and they come crashing down to the ground and you don't have anything left but God, and when you turn to him and you praise his name you find it is a joy it is a peace that comes in your life that was unimaginable before. Maybe Leah had just heard the Lord saying Leah I one showing you how much I love you and that's enough. In the end Bruce Larson was one of said that we hear voices from either the seller or the balcony like there is a basement to our soul, and there always is a voice there and that's calling out of it's darkness you're not good enough you don't amount to much not going to make it. And there's a voice from the balcony. God's voice to hire a voice and is telling you who you are.

Maybe Leah quit listening to the voice of the seller and start listening to the voice from the balcony may be. Maybe she had discovered the love of God in the end it's really a story about how one is blessed. That's really what this whole narratives about what is the pathway to blessedness in this life.

Jacob thought you had to position yourself you might deceive trick someone into it, but you gotta be in the right place. You make yourself into the right thing. That's how you get blessed and ironically he ends up marrying someone who is acting as though I have to pretend to be Rachel to be blessed and all throughout the narrative, what we're realizing is that Jacob didn't understand. There was a prophecy before he was born it was announcing a destiny over his life. Leah didn't understand is that she already was in the apple of God's I and that her identity, not in the end be defined by Jacobs dysfunction.

My kids thought we we live out now.

David County and we got upfield a lake and then some little trees in the Yadkin rivers there so we get beautiful. Some wildlife was the other dear and all the snow. But one day they saw is perched in the tree behind our house. A bald eagle analyzing a bald eagle one time in the wild out West one, trip all the other day I stepped on my back deck and I looked in the first I thought what a beautiful big hawk began to soar over the art in Outlook. Gloria's white head and a look on his wings were just enormous and he just soared down over the leg and back up over the trees. I can see back to the trees and just begin to soar down over the Yadkin River called Eagle and having just seen, then everything Craig Barnes book and he is, and how he had become fascinated with bald eagles and he learned years ago, baby bald Eagles were about to be hatched at the local zoo.

So I went down actually solve the bald eagles be hatched and he said what a disappointment if it is a game at a sale just a little wet. All of you know, it's good look anything like an eagle and a cub out of the shell of a business method would be terrible. Take that Eagle dropped off the roof tops I fly you know it would just drop like a stone because he couldn't fly it just a little ball of fire is wings going look like wings yet and yet it's a bald eagle little bird is a majestic bald Eagle is going to wait until it's time to spread its wings and soul Laura walk with him. The more I realize that so much of Christian growth is wait upon the Lord, so that you mount up with wings like an eagle could have a destiny.

God already has a destiny for your life and if we could see it if we could just have it prophesied to us if we could just discovered in the word.

If we could ask Syrians the nature of God's vision over who we are in Jesus Christ.

We live totally different life.

Well there is so beautiful ending to this in the first place. In the midst of all this dysfunctional family and all this laboring for love.

Leah has a son named Levi and it is from Levi that all the priests come as you are the son named Judah and is from Judah that David is born is from David the Jesus was born.

Lee is a great great great great great great great great great great grandmother of Jesus and maybe Jacob get something at the end because Rachel his fantasy. She died as she gave birth to her second son, Benjamin, and was buried. On the way towards Bethlehem, where her to Mr. this day by Jacob when he was nearing his and in Genesis 49 commanded them and said I am to be gathered to my people bury me with my father's and he describes the land and the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought there. He said they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife and their buried Leah in the end Jacob. Maybe he sought, he said bury me with Leah. You don't ever have to labor for love won't work instead you receive love God's love and you can receive his love will be enough and that that's good old sink into us today on the teaching and Leah in the greater series God used who they were. This Allen is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and the final word. Glad you heard about it with you. You believed in mind. My experience in the left but never myself love story from beginning to end spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bike. The Bible tells that this kind walk with Fremont Hispano member. The woman tasted the sweetness of God's love for you is pretty woman who searched for 25, which involved working only fully my doctor the five love languages size incredible reality that God pursues us in life comes to an F myself ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart except Christ proposal and showing his embrace raveling after the match made in heaven, lover myself. The gospel is shared when you get to Alan Wright Ministries.

This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you get today.

We will send you a special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our banks from Alan Wright Ministries, seven 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website pastor at Gatwick surprise you that may be what could be seen as a very simple concept is very difficult for us to really accept that we are love was the deepest most important revelation that you could ever have is that your loved by God. If somebody in this world rejects you, your loved by God, and Leah is such a beautiful story because she wasn't loved by her husband. It's hard to even fathom what that kind of rejections like until you've been there and some of our listeners.

Right now they know what it's like that that someone might've been the most important person in the world to you.

They just didn't have love to give your they didn't show lover. They transferred their love to someone else and they were deceived or they were. They were like Jacob who just had immaturity in his life and whatever it might be. By the time that she comes to her fourth child Judah. She gives him this name which is this means praise the Lord. I think that's the shift that has to happen. She goes from Ruben, which means CSI, but Jacob given your son.

Let me know.

Judah finally maybe sees place let my attention be upon the Lord and say that… Maybe you're in that spot right now where somebody you need them.

You want them to love you but they're not think make that happen. You can still raise Lord loves you. Today's good news message is a listener supported production Alan Wright Ministries