Good morning, brethren. Let's
be turning to Genesis 29. Genesis 29. At the end of Genesis 29, and
going deep into chapter 30, we have a recording of the names
of Jacob's sons. He's been married now to Leah
and to Rachel. And Laban gave Leah and Rachel
each a handmaid of Zilpah to Leah and Bilhah to Rachel. And so these four women are the
women that he had sons by. And so in these names, we see
the gospel. The Lord, by their names, reveals
the gospel of our Savior, Jesus Christ, to us. And so we'll look
at these names and we'll look at what their mothers said. When
they were named, Leah and Rachel were the ones who named them.
And they said something at the time of their birth that reveals
something to us of the gospel. So if these names do indeed reveal
the gospel to us, then we would expect that it would begin with
the son. Son Jesus Christ, and that's
exactly what we see here in the name of Reuben. But before I
get there, let me just say this one other thing, is that you'll
notice that there's four groupings of the sons, or you might notice,
I hope to bring this out to you, that in the four groupings of
the sons, you'll notice that each of them has something to
do with what Christ did for us. So not only in the name, but
even in the grouping and order that they're born, so that this
first group, which is the first four sons born to Jacob by Leah,
that is, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, you'll notice that
they all have something to do with the redemption of the Lord
Jesus Christ for His people. So, let's begin, verse 31, Genesis
29, 31, and 32. When the Lord saw that Leah was
hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived
and bare a son, and she called his name Reuben. For, she said,
surely the Lord hath looked upon my affliction. Now therefore
my husband will love me. So the name Reuben means behold
or see a son. Behold a son. And the reason
that Leah associated with his name being Reuben is surely the
Lord hath looked upon my affliction. And so the Son who is given for
the people of God to see and to behold is the Son of God,
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's whom the Father puts our
attention upon. Behold my Son, this is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased. The Father is pleased with His
Son. He gave His Son and He reveals
the Lord Jesus Christ to us because He is the one who is given for
the redemption, for the salvation, for the deliverance of His people. It's all given in the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. For God so loved the world. that he gave his only begotten
son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but
have everlasting life. And that what our Lord did is
before the foundation of the world, God knowing his eternal
purpose, he made provision for his people by giving us, putting
us into the care and into the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ. He made provision for us in His
Son to give us relief from sin's affliction. That's our affliction. We're born dead in trespasses
and sins. We're born sinners. We're born
condemned and under the wrath of God. And the Lord knows that,
and so He made provision for His people long before we were
ever formed on the earth and put on the earth and born. According
as God hath chosen us in Him, in Christ, before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
Him in love. God made provision. God sent
His Son to redeem His people through His sacrificial death
on the cross. That's where He made atonement
for the sins of His people. and obtained for us the forgiveness
of God, and set us free from our bondage, our affliction of
bondage to sin. Then we see in Genesis 29 verse
33, the second son. She conceived again, embarrassed
son, and said, Because the Lord hath heard I was hated. He hath therefore given me this
son, and she called his name Simeon. And the name Simeon means
hearing with acceptance. That is receiving that word,
not just hearing someone say something, but hearing and receiving
that word. believing that word, accepting
that word. And what we see in this is two
things. First, our God hears our cries. He's the God who hears
the prayers of his people. He knows your affliction. He
knows your sorrow. And He's gracious to His people
to save them in His Son. And it's pictured for us, what
our Lord did is He shows it throughout His Word. He shows us our salvation. He reveals Christ to us. For
example, in Exodus 3, verse 7, Exodus 3, 7, and going into verse
8, the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people. So you could see how this ties
Reuben and Simeon together. I've seen the affliction of my
people, which are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry by reason
of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. And I am come
down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to
bring them up out of that land unto a good land." And what does
the Gospel reveal to us? That Christ, the Son of God,
came down. He came down in the flesh to
deliver us from the hand of our enemies, to deliver us from our
enemies and to bring us up out of the land of bondage in our
affliction, in sin, and to bring us up to a good land of an eternal
inheritance in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see there in
God's deliverance of his people out of the bondage in Egypt,
it's a picture of what Christ does for his people. It's a picture
of what Christ does for his people. So the Lord makes known these
things to the weary and needy sinner in the preaching of the
gospel. He gives us the gospel. He reveals
Christ to us because that's what needy sinners need. That is our
salvation. That's our deliverance. He reveals
our salvation to us of Christ in Christ through the preaching
of the gospel. Therefore, we see that where
the Lord gives sight to his people, he gives a hearing ear that receives
his word and believes Christ. For example, we see in John 10
concerning the good shepherd, he that entereth in by the door
is the shepherd of the sheep. To him, the porter, the Holy
Spirit, opens. the door. He opens our heart. He gives us a new heart to receive
Christ, to see him and to hear his word. It says, And the sheep
hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth
them out. Out of what? Out of sin's bondage. Out of our bondage and condemnation
in Adam. And when he putteth forth his
own sheep out of that bondage, he goeth before them. he goes
before us and the sheep follow him for they know his voice and
he's speaking there of his redemption when he went to the cross that's
how he went before us and we in him and he saved us by his
death and delivered us out of bondage he did that and we follow
him We go with him. We are his body. And a stranger
will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know
not the voice of strangers. If one comes preaching what you
must do to save yourselves, we don't hear that. We don't receive
that word, because that's a false gospel. That's another gospel.
That's not the voice of Christ, who did all things for his people,
who accomplished our salvation. We don't make it effectual for
ourselves. Christ made it effectual. He
accomplished the work of redemption from beginning to end. That's
why he's called the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and
the end, the first and the last. He's the author and finisher
of our faith. He did it all. And so our hearing
Christ is the resulting fruit of the grace of God given to
us in the Lord Jesus Christ. You believe Christ. You hear
his voice and receive his word because of the grace of God. He makes it effectual in your
heart. It pleases him to bring you out
of darkness. It pleases God to make you to
know, to glory in the Lord Jesus Christ. It delights the Father
to glorify the Son, just as it delights the Son to glorify the
Father. Then we see back in Genesis 29,
verse 34, this is the third son. And she conceived again, and
bare a son, and said, now this time will my husband be joined
unto me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore was
his name called Levi. And Levi means joined, as in
a union between a man and his wife. a joining, a union there. And what do we know? What Christ
did in the redemption of his people Well, He's made us the
betrothed bride of Christ. We're His bride. He took us into
union with Himself. He purchased the church with
His own blood as the Lamb of God, sent to take away the sin
of the world. That is, Jew and Gentile, His
people throughout the world. Christ did that. He is the Savior
of His people. There's not another. Not another. There's one Savior in the world,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so to make this purchase,
he went to the cross, bearing his people in him. That's why
Paul says, I am crucified with Christ. He bore us in himself. As his own body, he went to the
tree, and he satisfied the justice of God perfectly. All that was
necessary, Christ obtained and accomplished our redemption by
the death of himself, giving sacrifice of himself to the Father
for the sins of his people. Bearing us, bearing the sins
of his people in his own body to put them away forever to obtain
eternal redemption for us. Putting us to death, putting
us to death to the law so that we are free to marry another,
even the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 7 verse 4, Wherefore,
my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of
Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is
raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto
God. The fruit we bring is born in
us. It's wrought in us by our Savior. It's His fruit. It's testifying
to what God has done for us. in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
then, Genesis 29, 35, she conceived again and bare a son. And she said, now will I praise
the Lord. Therefore, she called his name
Judah and left bearing. The name Judah means praised. We praise the Lord. The Lord
reveals Christ to our hearts, his church. And that's through
the new birth. which is given to us by the Holy
Ghost. If any man be in Christ, he is
a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold,
all things are become new. We're made new creatures and
given His Spirit by the Lord Jesus Christ, giving us a new
birth of the seed of Christ, the incorruptible seed of Christ,
so that now, for the first time ever, we praise God for what
He's done in spirit and in truth. Before then, we may have been
religious, very religious, but all our works and prayers and
songs and singing and sacrifices and doing and stopping and starting
was all dead works, wicked works, works of unrighteousness. But when Christ came, when he
gave us life, now those things are righteous because they're
wrought Christ by the Lord Jesus Christ in his people and now
for the first time we're worshiping God in spirit and in truth. He does that work and so we praise
him by the singing the song of redemption which only the church
knows. Only redeemed sinners know what
it is to be redeemed and to give glory to God for his redemption.
And so in those first four names we see there, it speaks to our
justification by the Lord Jesus Christ. And Rachel, she was envious
of her sister having all these sons because she was barren and
she could not conceive. And so she gave Jacob her handmaid,
Bilhah, to have sons by her. And when you come to these boys,
This is a second group now of Dan and Naphtali, and the sense
is that having been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ, we
come now in these two boys to a type of our struggles in the
wilderness, here on the earth, how the Lord works this and reveals
and manifests his grace in us through various struggles and
temptations. So let's look at Genesis 30 now,
go into chapter 30, and we'll pick up in verse 5 and 6. And
Bilhah conceived and bare Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath
judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a
son. Therefore called she his name
Dan. And Dan means judge. and the
hope of the believer. Our Lord, having saved us, gives
his people the hope of salvation. That's the helmet of our salvation.
It's the hope of salvation given to us, that in the Lord Jesus
Christ, I have been judged of God, and he is satisfied. My sins are paid for. They're
put away, and I am perfectly righteous in him. And He teaches
us and He strips us of all the baggage that we bring. All the
grave clothes we're wrapped up in and being turned back to the
flesh and thinking that there's something more we need to do.
And we go through those struggles and through those temptations
to turn back to the flesh. But the Lord in grace keeps bringing
His people back to see Christ. to give us the hope of the believer,
the hope of the saints in Christ, to see that he has accomplished
our redemption, that he's settled our debt of righteousness with
God. And we are free in him, saved
by him, made righteous by his blood, and settled in him to
rest in his substitutionary death, which accomplished everything
necessary for us. But he makes us to know that.
And he teaches us that through various struggles and difficulties
and temptations. And that brings us to the second
son, verse 7 and 8. And Bilhah, Rachel's maid, conceived
again and bare Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, with great
wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed. And she called his name Naphtali,
which means my wrestling. my wrestling. When Christ, our
light, and our salvation has come to us, there's a wrestling
that follows in the child of God. There's a wrestling between
this old fleshly nature, which is always looking to self and
saying, I've got to get doing. I've got to do better. I've got
to do more. I've got to do something else.
Surely it can't all be in Christ. Yes it is. And so there is this
struggle between this old nature, this filthy vile flesh, and the
new nature of Christ which is given to us whereby we believe
and do not sin. because it's the incorruptible
seed of Christ. We cannot not believe in the
new man. The old man doesn't believe nothing.
But in the new man of Christ, all we can do is believe Christ. Paul speaks of this wrestling
in Ephesians 4.21. If so be that ye have heard him
and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, that
ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man. which
is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. That includes our filthy
rag righteousness by which we thought we were saved and trusting
those things. Put that off and be renewed in
the spirit of your mind and that ye put on the new man which after
God has created it in righteousness and true holiness. He's the one
who gives us life. That's what repentance is. Be
turned from dead works that cannot save, trusting these things for
your righteousness, and be turned to the Lord Jesus Christ, who
is the righteousness of God given to us, given for us. And he makes
us to see that it's all of his grace. And God suffers it to
be so. He suffers this wrestling in
his people. with all our baggage, with all
our false ideas, with all our flesh and foolishness. And he uses those things to show
us our weakness, that we would have no confidence in the flesh. As Paul said, we had the sentence
of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves,
but in God, which raiseth the dead. And so he brings various
trials, he brings various afflictions and hardships and difficulties
to strip away the vanity of this flesh, the vain workings, the
dead workings of this flesh, and grows us in the grace and
knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He does it all.
Now, so we see that wrestling here in the wilderness. We see
how the Lord teaches us and grows us. We're as saved as we're ever
going to be in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. But so long as
we're here, he's teaching us and growing us in his grace,
giving us a deeper understanding of how he's everything for us. We could die just like the thief
on the cross right away, and we're as saved as we're ever
going to be. But as long as we're here, he does teach us. It delights
him to teach us and grow us in grace. Then in response to what
Rachel had done, Leah gave Jacob her handmaid, Zilpah. And this
is the third group. And we see a third group of four
boys again, two by Zilpah, and then two more by Leah. So this is Gad and Asher, and
then Issachar and Zebulun. And this has to do with our labors
as the church, which remains here in the earth till Christ
returns. So these describe the church's
labors and our labors in the church, the body of Christ here
in the earth. All right, so Genesis 30, verse
10 and 11. In Zilpah, Leah's maid bared
Jacob's son, and Leah said, a troop cometh. And she called his name
Gad. And the name Gad means troop
or company. Though we wrestle in prayer as
we learn the depravity of this flesh and the deadness of this
flesh to do anything good or righteous, our Lord makes known
to us. We're like that man who was on
the side of the road left for dead. When Christ comes, and
what did Christ do on the road to Damascus? He took that man,
he put him on himself, the beast of burden, and he brought him
to the inn where he was cared for. And that's what the Lord
does. He gathers us together, assembles us with his body in
the church where we are cared for and helped. and comforted
and taught this gospel. And he reveals to us that we
are the adopted sons and daughters of God. that we are living members
of his body and we see that we are compassed about with so great
a cloud of witnesses for our joy, for our comfort, for our
rest, and for our peace while we're here in the earth. So we
are kept by God's grace and these are gifts that he gives to us
one another as the body of Christ Then in verses 12 and 13, Zilpah,
Leah's maid, bared Jacob a second son. And Leah said, happy am
I, for the daughters will call me blessed. And she called his
name Asher. And that's what Asher means,
happy. It means happy. And it speaks to the ministration
of the gospel which is given to us, whereby you are fed, and
nourished, strengthened, and kept, and comforted, and the
Lord gives your hearts peace, that this is indeed the gospel. This is what the Lord has given
to his people for our good, for our comfort, and for our keeping.
So we're made happy. The more and more we hear of
Christ, the more and more we hear of how he's done it, he's
accomplished it, we rejoice in that. We're made happy. If I
stand up here and I start telling you what you need to start doing
better, That's when we're not happy. Now we're burdened. Now
we're brought down. Now we suffer. And we're troubled
and confused and in darkness. But while we hear what Christ
has done, it's an encouragement to our hearts. It's rejoicing. And he makes us happy. And then
one day, now we're coming to Leah's two boys in the same group
here. Leah saw Reuben with some mandrakes, and she wanted those
mandrakes, and so she traded her husband. So Jacob loved Rachel,
and he spent a lot of time with Rachel. And so Leah said, well,
I'll give you the mandrakes, but I want the man. You give
me Jacob tonight. And so she hired. Basically,
the Lord called it a hiring. She hired Jacob. It was for the
wages for the mandrakes there. Verse 17 and 18. And God hearkened
unto Leah, and she conceived, and bare Jacob the fifth son.
And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given
my maiden to my husband. And she called his name Issachar,
meaning wages. These are wages for me. And first,
our Lord Jesus came, our Lord, he came as the faithful servant
of God. When He came, He didn't do His
own works, He didn't speak His own words, He came speaking the
words which He heard the Father, and He came doing the works which
the Father gave Him to do, and so He went faithfully to the
cross to accomplish the redemption that the Father gave Christ to
do, when He gave us to Christ for His inheritance. And Christ
went and did that. He did that work as the faithful
servant of God. Even as Christ Jesus laid down
his life for us, so we who are born again of his grace, of his
spirit, of his power, we are made willing bondservants of
the Lord. We willingly serve the Lord now
in the church, being fellow helpers with our God and rejoicing in
him. And we trust him. We forsake and forego the various
momentary passing vain pleasures of this world, committing all
that to Christ, knowing that he has given his word and he
is our inheritance. We trust him. As Paul said, I
know whom I believe in and am persuaded that he is able to
keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. Paul
could have done other things. He could have been wealthy and
and risen up in the ranks of his countrymen. But he sacrificed
all that. He gave that all up as dumb,
worthless things to labor for Christ as his servant. And then,
verses 19 and 20, Leah conceived again and bared Jacob, the sixth
son. And Leah said, God hath endued
me with a good dowry. Now will my husband dwell with
me, because I have borne him six sons. And she called his
name Zebulun. And Zebulun means dwelling. Christ is our dwelling. He's our eternal inheritance. And so we rest in him through
every trial, through every difficulty, through every affliction, We
are taught to rest in Christ, and he teaches us through these
things patience, and through that patience, experience, and
through that experience, hope in Christ. He does all that work
for us, brethren. Now, some time had gone by, and
the Lord put a distance of time between Jacob's first 10 sons
and the next two by Rachel. And then came a fourth group
here of two sons by Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin. And this has to
do with the grace of our Lord to fulfill all his promises to
us in Christ. These last two boys here. Genesis
30, verse 22 through 24, God remembered Rachel. And God hearkened
to her and opened her womb. And she conceived and bare a
son and said, God hath taken away my reproach. And she called
his name Joseph and said, the Lord shall add to me another
son. And so Joseph's name means adding,
adding. And this speaks to the purpose
of our God. being learned through much patience
that he's the one who calls out his sheep. We've labored here
now for about six years since I've come here, and a little
over six years. And it's a patient labor, trusting
the Lord to add to the number as he sees fit. And we wait upon
him. We trust him. knowing that the
Lord added to the church dailies such as should be saved in Acts,
knowing that as many as were ordained to eternal life believed,
and we trust the Lord. We're here to preach the gospel,
knowing that this is the means by how our God calls out his
sheep, making known to them what he's accomplished for them in
the Lord Jesus Christ. And he gives them a seeing eye
and a hearing ear to receive that word of Christ, to believe
Him, that He does it. It's His promise to fulfill His
word, and we trust Him in that. And then Rachel conceived once
more, and she would die in childbirth. And this isn't, we don't see
this until Genesis chapter 35, verse 18. It came to pass as
her soul was in departing, before she died, that she called his
name Benoni, or Benoni, but his father called him Benjamin. And
the name Benoni means son of sorrow, son of my sorrow. And
the name Benjamin means son of my right hand. And it's a picture
of Christ and what our Lord has accomplished for us. It speaks
of his redemption for his people from their sins. It speaks of
him reconciling us to the Father through his faithful, redemptive
work. And he was a man of sorrows,
a hated man by the flesh, hated by the religious establishment.
And he was an enemy, the enemy of man in the flesh. But he was
the faithful son of God, who is the friend of sinners, the
savior of sinners, to save his people. And though we were born
children of disobedience and children of wrath, we are now
born again by the righteousness of Christ and saved by his righteousness
and delivered from that wrath. And when you look at Benjamin,
you see, well, here we are back again at the sun. Because it
begins with the son, Reuben, behold the son, and then it comes
right back to the son of my right hand, the son of the right hand,
which is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is now exalted, risen again
from the dead, and exalted to the right hand of the throne
of his father, ruling and reigning and implementing the purpose
of God and all things, so that all that the father promised
is brought to pass under the wisdom and power and glory of
the Lord Jesus Christ for His people. He's the Alpha and the
Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last,
ruling and reigning, and He's the one that ensures all the
promises of God are brought to pass. You can depend upon Him,
lean upon Him. And so in this brief little outline
we see how even in the names of these sons we see the gospel
revealed and declared to us of the Lord Jesus Christ and what
he accomplishes for his people. Amen.