Genesis chapter 29 and verse
31. And 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. And she conceived again and bare
a son, and said, Because the Lord hath heard that I was hated,
he hath therefore given me this son also. And she called his
name Simeon. 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 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. And when Rachel saw that she
bared Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and said unto
Jacob, Give me children or else I die. And Jacob's anger was
kindled against Rachel. And he said, Am I in God's stead? Who hath withheld from thee the
fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold my maid
Bilhah. Go in unto her, and she shall
bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her. And she gave him Bilhah, her
handmaid, to wife. And Jacob went in unto her. And Bilhah conceived and bared
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 Bilhah Rachel's maid conceived
again, and bared 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. When Leah saw that she had left
bearing, she took Zilpah, her maid, and gave her Jacob to wife. And Zilpah, Leah's maid, bared
Jacob a son. And Leah said, A troop cometh. And she called his name Gad. And 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 Reuben went in the days of
wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them
unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give
me, I pray thee, thy son's mandrakes. And she said unto her, Is it
a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldst
thou take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore
he shall lie with thee tonight for thy son's mandrakes. And
Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went out
to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me, for surely I
have hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her
that night. And God hearkened unto Leah,
and she conceived and bared 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. And Leah conceived again, and
bare 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 afterwards she bare a daughter,
and called her name Dinah. And 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. As indeed
he did, and that son was called Benjamin. And we will read about
that on another occasion. May the Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. Now this is quite a long passage,
perhaps it makes up for the shortness of Psalm 117, but then it is
merited because Jacob had quite a big family. In those days and
in that culture, having multiple wives and even lesser wives or
concubines was practiced. and the laws about marriage would
change later, but at this time, it was allowed. And yet, history
proves that such multiple families were invariably troublesome,
and their homes unhappy homes. So let this be a lesson for us. When God provides pattern for
living. We do well to abide by it. God gave Adam Eve. He gave Abraham Sarah. He gave one wife to one husband
and all deviation from that leads to heartache and misery. We imagine Do we not that doing
what we want brings happiness and pleasure? If I can do what
I want, I'll be happy. But doing what we want because
we have sin in our lives usually brings sadness. And if you don't
believe me, I suspect that you will live to prove it to be so. These four women that we have
been reading about today bore 12 sons to Jacob, Leah and Rachel,
Bilhah and Zilpah. Leah and Rachel were full wives.
Bilhah and Zilpah were concubines or the maidens, the maids, handmaids
of Leah and Rachel and they were given to Jacob also to bear children
for him. Now, and I suspect I'm about
to let the cat out the bag here, but if I say that these 12 boys
became the fathers of 12 tribes arising from them, then perhaps
you'll begin to realise the importance of us going through all these
verses today, because the whole of the Old Testament and much
of the symbolism of the New is built upon this family and what
came from it, collectively known as the Children of Israel, because
Jacob's name was changed from Jacob to Israel and these 12
boys became the children of Israel that we hear about so much in
the Bible. But that is a story for another
day. The sons of Leah were six, that's
Reuben and Simeon, Levi and Judah, Issachar and Zebulun. And those are the names of the
tribes of the children of Israel. So the father's names or the
son's names became the names of the tribes. The sons of Rachel
were Joseph and later Benjamin. That makes eight in total. The
sons of Bilhah, that was Rachel's handmaid, were Dan and Naphtali,
that's ten. And the sons of Zilpah, Leah's
handmaid, were Gad and Asher, and that makes the twelve. And
there was also a daughter born to Leah called Dinah, and I suspect
that one girl amongst all those boys, she might have been quite
a charming young lady. What we can tell from this passage
is that Jacob's household, large as it was, was not always a happy
family. There was envy, there was anger,
there were threatenings and there was shame. In the Bible, families
are not trouble-free, but many times they are beset with all
kinds of bitterness and jealousy, and we find that there is a very
real and practical dimension to what the Bible tells us about
some of these people. You know, they may have been
heroes in one sense, and yet they were just clay vessels in
another. Just humans of flesh and blood
with all their problems, all their troubles, and all their
difficulties. And that led and reached even
to the relationships that they had in their families. It was
so in Jacob's home and it's so in all of history. And that's simply because of
sin. And that's not to say that it's just one person who is to
blame for all the trouble, but because sin is in the hearts
of us all. We all make life hard for one
another. For 20 years, living with Laban
in Haran, Jacob's life was hard. And we discover that it wasn't
going to get much easier after he left Haran and went back into
his own land of Israel. Nevertheless, God's promise remained
with Jacob and God's promise did not fail. The land that he
would inherit and the land that these boys would inherit as the
children of Israel would indeed be his. He would return home.
and the nations of the earth would be blessed in that people
and specifically in the Messiah who would come from that people,
that precious seed who would come from whom all the nations
of the world would be blessed. And I've got a little question
for you. Do you know which one of those 12 boys the Messiah
would come from? Do you know which one of the
12 of Jacob's sons, the Lord Jesus Christ, would come from? Let me give you a clue. One of the names of the Lord
Jesus Christ, which he is given in the book of the Revelation,
is the Lion of the house of Judah. Well, there you are, that's the
answer, isn't it? Judah was the fourth son of Leah, and he would
be the line, both of the kings of Israel, because David was
of that house, and also that son of David. Remember, Jesus
was called the son of David, or David's greater son. so the
Lord Jesus Christ would come from the line of Judah. So this was an important family
and this was an important time in the history of the Bible revelation. And there's a wee lesson in here
for us. The lesson is that our lives
are not always easy in the same way as Jacob's life was. And
sometimes we feel that rather than being easy, they're always
hard. but God is faithful and God's
promises are sure and true. Jacob, through all of the difficulties
of his family life and his relationships and his relationship with Laban
and his work that he had to do and all the conflict that was
there in his home, kept trusting God, even through all the bad
times, the depression, the threats, the bitterness, the pain, the
bickering and the infighting, because true faith endures with
God's help. True faith outlives and outlasts
the trials of our faith. Let me mention just a couple
of things and then we'll move on. In these verses we see great
emphasis on childbearing and no doubt that was important with
an eye to the coming Messiah. Jacob had made no secret of the
promises that had been made to Abraham and to Isaac and now
to Jacob as the heir of that promise. So the family would
know about this and there would be great anticipation that this
special child was to come from this family. And so this emphasis
in childbearing is perhaps understandable amongst these women, at least
as one reason. there was this promise of the
Messiah and the promise of many nations. However, it is important
for us to remember that children are a gift of God. And you who are listening to
me at the moment who are younger, do you realise that you are a
gift to your parents from God? I know some of you are quite
young, but you are a gift from God. God is the one who gives children
and sometimes God withholds children. There are no accidents when it
comes to the giving of a life and the giving of a soul. And in the big and the small
things of life, it is good for us to see the hand of God in
them all and to learn patience when things don't go the way
we want them to, perhaps in our timescale or to meet our expectations. And the second thing is this,
and it's connected in a sense. But in verse 17 and in verse
22 of chapter 30, we learn that both Leah and Rachel asked the
Lord for help for their problems. And we're told that the Lord
hearkened to them. Do you know what that means?
He heard them. he heard their prayers and he
answered them. So let us learn from Leah and
Rachel to take our troubles to the Lord and to ask for his help
because God loves his children in the Lord Jesus Christ and
he hears and he answers our prayers. He hears and He answers our prayers. And I cannot give you better
advice today, brothers and sisters, boys and girls, than to take
your troubles to the Lord. Amen.