In 2004, Allstate insurance company released a series of commercials staring Dennis Haysbert, also known as President Palmer from the TV show ‘24’. The marketing idea behind these commercials was that in desperate situations, rather than being out on your own, you would want someone like President Palmer looking out for you. Who wouldn't want to find President Palmer in your corner? Allstate was thrilled with the results of Haysbert’s deep resonant voice asking their new slogan, ‘Are you in good hands?’
Are you in good hands?
What if President Palmer wasn’t working for Allstate? What if he worked for God? And when he asked, ‘are you in good hands?’ he was asking you to trust God in your desperate situations rather than yourself? When the unexpected, sudden, and overwhelming situations occur, who’s hands would you choose to be in?
You know in desperate situations the natural tendency is to look out for oneself. In the dire moments, when your bills pile up with no way to pay them; when your child gets sick and you have to rush them to the emergency room, when your church community begins to collapse around you, when family relationships break down, when years go by and you and your spouse still aren’t pregnant; when the worst happens you will want to keep the control in your own two hands.
In Genesis 29:28-30:24. And in this section we find three people in desperate situations. Rather than trusting God, these three people will choose to trust themselves.
In this passage we find Jacob married to two women, Rachel and her sister Leah. Rachel was beautiful. Leah wasn't so much. Jacob wanted to marry Rachel, but got suckered into marrying both women by his decietful uncle.
Rachel just wants to have kids with the man she loves. But she is barren. Leah just wants Jacob to love her. But he doesn't.
People find themselves in desperate situations.
Many years ago my father was a budding architect. He passed all his tests, received his architecture license, scrapped out his first years in a variety of firms, and then God told him to start his own architecture company. My father looked around and saw his wife and four children in a 1000 square foot house. He saw bills piling up. His pay check stubs witnessed to him his alarming lack of funds. My family was eating bread and onion soup two and three times a week. My father saw that he was far from his ideal plan for our family.
In our passage, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel find themselves far from their ideal plans for their lives. Jacob was in a desperate situation. He wanted what God had promised him in chapter 28, land, descendants, and blessing. But Jacob finds himself having been deceived by his Uncle and married to two women, one of which he doesn’t love. To make matters worse, he has agreed with his Uncle to stick around and work for him another 7 years. Jacob wants to move on to the land that God has promised him, but he’s stuck here for 7 more years. He wants to be with his true love Rachel, but instead he also has to tend to her sister Leah.
Leah is in a desperate situation. She wants to be loved by her husband. But no husband has come for her in at least 7 years. No one has wanted her. While girlfriends in the area were getting married off one by one over the course of years, Leah is still alone. Leah is jealous of her younger sister who has found a great man, Jacob. And suddenly, Leah finds herself married to Jacob first. And her dreams of being loved by her husband are dashed as we find in verses 29:30-31, she was unloved.
Rachel finds herself in desperate situation. She wants to have children with the man she loves. But she finds herself to be barren. Her sister is also married to her husband, sleeping with him, and to make matters worse she keeps getting pregnant.
People find themselves in desperate situations. And in desperate situations, people most often trust in themselves.
Rather than begin his own practice, my father did what he thought was right for him. He took a job in San Antonio at a prestigious architecture firm there, leaving the rest of my family in Arlington. He thought this was the experience he needed to become the kind of architect he wanted to be. Plus the paycheck was good.
Jacob too trusts in himself. Unable to move on to the land God had promised him, wondering where God’s blessing was in his current situation, Jacob does the only thing he can do; works on having descendants. Throughout this passage Jacob is a baby-making machine. He is virtually silent in our section. We don’t see him praying to God. We don’t see him working on leading his family. We don’t see him question the wisdom of sleeping with the maids. We don’t see him concerning himself with the emotional feelings of his wives. In this desperate situation, when asked, ‘Are you in good hands?’ Jacob trusts his own two hands and does what he can to move forward, makes babies.
In this desperate situation Leah trusts her own two hands as well. Unloved and incapable of competing with her sister in looks, Leah tries to win Jacob’s love the only way she can. She bears him children. In 29:32 she bears Reuben, 33 Simeon, 34 Levi, 35 Judah, in 30:18 Issachar, 30:20 Zebulan, and a daughter Dinah. And although she repeatedly names these children with God honoring names, her true desire for having all of these children is found in the words before the name. In 29:32 she says, ‘now my husband will love me.’ In 33, she was unloved. In 34, she prays that now after three sons, Jacob will love her.’ By the sixth child in 30:20 she still says, ‘now my husband will dwell with me because I have given him 6 children.’ And in all this, Jacob never loves her the way she desires. She did what she could and trusted her own two hands.
Rachel trusted her own two hands. Finding herself barren, in 30:1 she becomes jealous of her sister and blames Jacob for her barrenness, ‘give me children or else I die.’ Then, after Jacob rebukes her, she makes a very rash decision and gives her maid to Jacob. She decides the children may not be physically hers, but she will take them anyway. She doesn’t question God in her situation. She doesn’t question how her maid may have felt about the arrangement. All she sees is her own hurt and jealousy and she does what she can and trusts her own two hands.
People in desperate situations most often trust themselves. And trusting in yourself rather than God has consequences.
My Father came back from San Antonio on weekends, sometimes every other week. He missed soccer games, birthdays, time with his family. My mom had a hard time raising four kids by herself. It became quickly apparent to my Father that trusting in his own hands for what was best for him had been a big mistake.
Jacob had similar consequences. In his selfishness, he missed the opportunity to be a strong spiritual and family leader. His family had dysfunctional relationships sprouting up and because he was so self absorbed he didn’t see them or stop them.
Leah missed out on the blessing of having children, because she was so focused on the child’s failure to get her husband to love her. Child after child failed to bring her what she wanted. To the point where she uses her oldest, Reuben, to get another chance to win her husband in 30:14-15.
Rachel only makes the situation worse when she gives Jacob her maid because Leah does the same thing with her maid. She lets her jealousy and bitterness escalate to the point, when God finally blesses her with a child in 30:24, the first thing out of her mouth is ‘may the Lord give me another son.’ She can’t stop competing. She can’t even be grateful for the miracle she was given.
In the end, the dysfunction of all three of them results in the dysfunctional relationships in the family that begin the whole story of Joseph and the coat of many colors. Trusting in ourselves in desperate situations has consequences.
So how do we respond to this? We trust God. In desperate situations, we should trust God rather than ourselves.
First of all, God has a plan. God had a plan for Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. Ultimately through this mess, God still blessed them in that the children make up the twelve tribes of Israel. By the time Jacob meets up with Esau a few chapter later Jacob is wealthier than he could have imagined becoming.
Secondly, God keeps his promises. Jacob received descendants. Promise kept. He was greatly blessed with family and wealth. He lived a long full life. Another promise kept. His descendants don’t walk into the promised land until some time later, but God keeps that promise as well.
Finally, if we are trusting in ourselves rather than God, we become blind to the blessings of God. God was actively working in these people’s lives but rather than praising God for these blessings, they were too consumed with selfishness to see the great things God was doing.
God has a plan. God keeps his promises. And we don’t want to miss out on God’s blessings in our lives.
After 6 months in San Antonio, my father quit his job and returned home. He decided that in spite of conventional wisdom, despite his natural tendencies, he was going to trust God rather than himself. He began an architecture company in our basement. For the first couple of years we barely got by, but all the bills got paid. He attended my soccer games. We had food on the table. My mother wasn’t alone. While other opportunities arose at other companies my father continued to trust God rather than himself. He trusted that God had a plan, and he didn’t want to miss what God was doing.
Today, he is the CEO of his own multimillion dollar architecture company. He is licensed in numerous states and has won multiple design awards. When President Palmer asks my dad, ‘are you in good hands?’ my father would say without a doubt, ‘yes.’
What desperate situation are you going through? The temptation for you today is to handle it yourself. To find your own way out. To trust your own two hands. But let me encourage you, when you sit on your couch at home, and President Palmer appears on the TV asking you, ‘are you in good hands?’; let that be a reminder to you today that in your desperate situations, trust God rather than yourself.
Cheers
