Mr. Own Understanding

Genesis 29:1-30
Gary Wassermann | Sunday, October 23, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gary Wassermann

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Jacob’s time in Haran was anything but a straight path.  What was supposed to be a relatively short journey, in which he stayed in Haran for a few days while his brother cooled off, turned into twenty years of hard labor.  The work itself was hard, and he toiled under a crafty and deceitful master who took advantage of him at every opportunity.  He hoped for a peaceful and joyful marriage.  But in a cruel trick, he was cheated out of it, and he ended up married to two sisters, which led to strife, competition, and division.  Finally, he fled in secret, fearing that he would be attacked and killed by his own uncle.

How do we explain all of the trouble that Jacob experienced?  Last week we heard especially about Jacob’s utter failure to function in his God-given role as the head of his home and that caused so much trouble in his family.  But how did he stumble into that mess in the first place?  The answer is that Jacob did not trust in the Lord.  If John Bunyan wanted a character called Mr. Own Understanding, he would not have had to look much further than to Jacob.

We are going to look at this under the headings of “Prayerlessness,” “Conduct,” and “Pain.”

Prayerlessness

Jacob’s journey to Haran to find a wife had many clear parallels with the journey of Abraham’s servant a generation earlier.  The Bible is given to us by authors, ultimately by God and secondarily by Moses, who want us to recognize these things and appreciate the points of comparison and contrast.  Both went to Haran.  Both stopped at a well.  There both encountered a young lady who had come to draw water, and in both cases the young lady is from the right clan for a wife.  In both cases, the young lady returns home and reports the meeting to her family, the traveler is brought to the family’s house, and in due time the young lady is married to the man for whom a wife is being sought.  There are, of course, also several points of contrast.  In the generation earlier, it was a servant who came on behalf of Isaac; in this case, it was Jacob himself who came.  It was previously the servant who had ten camels loaded with all sorts of good things; Jacob came with nothing, with only his staff.

But surely the most significant point of contrast is this: Abraham’s servant prayed throughout his journey from beginning to end.  He surely prayed during the many days of travel.  When he arrived, he prayed as the servant of Abraham.  He prayed for success.  He asked that God would identify the woman God had chosen by means of a sign, and not just any sign, but one that would exhibit beautiful inner character—the character of being hardworking, generous, hospitable, and eager to serve.  He was not looking for external beauty or cultural refinement or any other such thing.  So when Rebekah gave water to his camels and he learned who she was, the servant bowed down and worshiped the Lord, giving thanks for God’s faithfulness to Abraham and leading him to exactly the right place and the right people.  Then at Laban’s house again he bowed down in worship and he prayed, and he prayed, and he prayed.

Jacob did not pray.  Throughout this chapter and the following chapter, we do not read of any references to prayer.  He did not present himself to the Lord as the Lord’s servant, and one who by sheer grace was the heir of the promises made to Abraham.  He did not ask the Lord for success.  He did not ask the Lord for guidance in identifying the right woman for him.  He did not ask for a sign or in some way “put out a fleece,” as we might say, so that he may know the Lord’s will.

Jacob’s prayerlessness is all the more significant because of the experiences he had had and the frame of mind he was in on this journey.  Jacob began this journey in a desperate position.  Esau wanted to kill him, and that for a reason.  Esau’s hatred was ungodly and excessive, but it was not irrational.  Jacob probably left in a hurry while Esau was out, so that he did not have time to pack up gifts and treasures to take with him.  All alone, he laid his head on a stone, and so surely he would have been feeling his weakness.  It is when we feel our weakness that we are especially driven to pray, but Jacob did not pray.

But then, very early in his journey, God appeared to him in a dream.  This was not the product of his anxious mind.  This was the living God, and angels were coming down from heaven to earth, and angels were returning to heaven again.  God spoke to Jacob great words of blessing and promise.  “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land.  I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised for you.”  Jacob had so powerful a sense of the presence of God that the thought that filled his mind was, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

This consciousness of God affected Jacob.  After dream and his vow, Genesis 29:1 says, “Then Jacob continued on his journey,” but more literally it is, “And Jacob lifted up his feet.”  It conveys the idea that Jacob had a new optimism and new energy after God had spoken to him.  Look at the frame of mind Jacob was in.  Jacob was not angry at God.  He was not fleeing from God.  He did not have any question about whether God was real or whether God was involved in the affairs of the world.  He knew all these things as surely as he knew anything else.  Yet in spite of all of this, when Jacob resumed his journey, he did not pray.

The distance from Beersheba to Haran is about five hundred miles.  It has been estimated at about a thirty-day journey on foot, most of which would have come after Bethel.  That gave Jacob plenty of time to think and to lift his concerns to God, but he did not.  I am sure Jacob would have said that he was a believer in God.  He was confident because God was there.  He was trusting in God.  But there is a great difference between what we may think of as trusting God in the same way that Jacob did, and praying.

Prayer requires that we articulate our requests to God.  The phrase that Rev. Broderick has used for communication with other people is: “In English words out loud.”  That is what prayer is toward God.  Now it is true that you don’t have to speak out loud to pray, but most prayers in the Bible are out loud, and for myself I can say that I have found it is much easier to pray out loud.  It forces you to articulate what you want to say, and it helps you to stay focused.  We are speaking here to a real God who really hears us.  You may think, “I know my problem, and God knows my need,” but so what?  That is not praying.  God knows everyone’s need.  He answers not those who expect his help but those who pray.

We may almost unconsciously excuse ourselves from prayer by supposing that since we trust in God, that’s all we need.  That leads to a sort of Christian fatalism, that what will happen is what God wills, and my task is simply not to complain, to go along with it, and to know that all things are in the hands of God.  But how are we better for knowing God than the people of the world if we do not pray?

Psalm 5:3 speaks of prayer early, in anticipation of what we need: “In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.”  It is when we lay our requests before God that we can look in faith for what God will do.

When trouble comes and we are anxious, Philippians 4:6–7 tell us what to do.  It says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything,”—and the next thing it says is not “trust God,” but—“by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”  If we want to distinguish prayer and petition, we could say that prayer is coming before God in humble supplication, and petition is specific items that we are requesting from him.  It is when we do that that God promises that “The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

When David faced the Philistines in 1 Chronicles 14, he prayed:  “Shall I go and attack the Philistines?  Will you hand them over to me?”  God answered him, and he was victorious.  David faced the same enemy a second time, and again he prayed, speaking, articulating, presenting his requests to God.  God spoke and articulated and presented his answer to David, and therefore David was victorious.

There are only two sources of strength, two sources of direction, two sources of confidence, and if you don’t pray, no matter what you may think, you are leaning onto your own understanding.  That is what Jacob did, and he was totally unprepared for what was ahead.  Already in Genesis 29:1 we see dark clouds on the horizon.  Jacob went “to the land of the eastern peoples.”  In Genesis, the east consistently has negative connotations.  In Genesis 4:16, the east is associated with judgment as Cain “went out from the Lord’s presence” and went east.  In the tower of Babel in Genesis 11:2 we see that the east is a place of pride, and in the plains of Sodom in Genesis 13:11 where Lot went, the east is a place of materialism and vanity.  In Genesis 25:6, Abraham’s other sons are sent to the east, and so are alienated from the household of the heir of the blessings.  There was great danger and great heartache ahead, and Jacob did not realize it.  Surely, if he had, he would have prayed.

Brothers and sisters, we don’t know what will happen tomorrow.  We may be heading straight into a dark forest without realizing it. Now, God can lead us on a straight path safely through.  But if we fail to pray and we lean onto our own understanding, we may fall into one needless trouble after another, as Jacob did.

Conduct

From this beginning of prayerlessness, from this implicit leaning onto his own understanding, Jacob then conducted himself accordingly. So this is the conduct of living on your own understanding.  We are going to see Jacob’s power, his presentation, and his proposal.

Power: Jacob Relied on His Own Power or Strength

The well that Jacob came to might better be described as a large storage tank or a cistern built in the area to store the scarce water for the sheep.  When he arrived, there were three shepherds with their flocks.

They were waiting for other shepherds in order to move the large, heavy, flat stone that was put over the top of the cistern to keep the dirt and the insects out of the water.  There was a hole in the middle of the stone that was covered by a large boulder that served as both a sanitary measure and a security measure, so that no individual could come and use the well and take the scarce water without permission.  Several men were needed to move the boulder on top of the well, so that the water was secured for the local community.

The shepherds who Jacob met with say in verse 6, “And here comes [Laban’s] daughter Rachel with the sheep.”  Jacob was fascinated, and what fascinates Jacob is not that a woman is bringing the sheep—that was not an unusual thing—but it was the identity of this woman.  This was the daughter of the man to whose family he had been sent that he might find a wife from among the daughters of Laban.  And as Rachel approaches, Jacob’s eyes are on her first, and then on the sheep, and he was probably impressed with her beauty.

So we can understand immediately Jacob’s intense interest in Rachel, and he wants to help her.  He wants to do something to get her attention, and to impress and attract her.  In verse 10, he doesn’t even ask the other shepherds, but he goes down and on his own rolls away the stone from the mouth of the well, and waters his uncle’s sheep.  Obviously, Jacob is energized and moved by the situation and so he has strength to do what ordinarily one man cannot do.  That strength was designed to impress this young lady and win her favor, and that strength and the report about it probably also caught Laban’s attention as what would make this man a good worker.

But look at the contrast between Jacob moving the stone when he finds the daughter of Laban and Abraham’s servant when he found the woman God had chosen.  Abraham’s servant bowed down and worshiped the Lord.

Also look at this also in terms of what the author has presented in this text.  There are five references to the stone over the well in Genesis 29.  Verse 2: “The stone over the mouth of the well was large.”  Verse 3: “The shepherds would roll the stone away from the well’s mouth.”  And again, “Then they would return the stone to its place over the mouth of the well.”  Then in verse 8: “We can’t [water the sheep] until all the flocks are gathered and the stone has been rolled away.”  And in verse 10: “[Jacob] went over and rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well.”  Why five references to a stone?

Is there any other past reference in Jacob’s life to a stone?  Recall the previous chapter (Genesis 28).  Verse 11: “Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.”  Verse 18: “Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar.”  Verse 22: “This stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house.”  This is a visual aid to show us what is going on here.  In Genesis 28, you have the stone at Bethel, and in Genesis 29 you have the stone over the well that Jacob rolled away by his own strength.  One stone speaks of the presence of God, the stairway, and the covenant promises.  The other stone speaks of the strength of Jacob and what he can do on his own, apart from prayer and independently.

Jacob has moved from the stone that was the place of worship, a memorial, to a stone in which he wanted to be strong with his own energy to impress a young woman.  But pride comes before a fall.  This what that warns us about.  Don’t operate by your own strength.  Don’t take things into your own hands.

How about you?  What stone are you leaning on?  Are you living by the stone that you’re moving by your own admirable energy and skills and gifts and powers so that people look at you and say, “What a person that is!  Look at what he or she can do”?  Is that the stone you’re trusting in?  Or are you leaning upon the stone of worship and dedication, kneeling in the presence of God and thanking him for everything?  Which stone are you sitting beside, and which stone represents your life?

Presentation: How Jacob Presented Himself

Second, look at how Jacob presented himself.  Jacob had been accustomed to scheming.  The family he was brought up in taught him in that, and his own decisions and his own disposition solidified him in that way of thinking and operating.  He would use the position or the assets or the opportunities he had to get the angle he wanted.  It doesn’t take a lot of wealth or resources to prepare a pot of soup, but by preparing it at just the right time and having it at just the right place, he could get pretty far.  Proverbs 30:24 says, “Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise.”  Jacob probably thought of himself in those terms.  He could spot the opportunity.  He could take advantage of it.  One way or the other, by hook or by crook, he could get by.

So when he arrived at Laban’s house, certainly he was full of emotion at meeting his own relatives, especially when they were just the people he had been seeking.  But at the same time, it seems that he did not come right out and state his purpose.  He waited while he got a feel for the situation.  It does not seem that he brought up the issue of marriage for a whole month while he stayed with Laban.  It was only when Laban asked what Jacob’s wages should be that Jacob speaks of marriage to Rachel.  Laban says, “It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man.”  It appears that this is being discussed for the first time.

Jacob had arrived without gold or silver or any other gifts.  He didn’t have even a donkey, let alone ten camels laden with good things.  He was essentially a beggar.  This would hardly commend him to the father of the lady he hoped to marry.  Beyond that, he was a runaway of sorts, a fugitive.  He had fled from his own home for fear of his life, so this was shame on top of poverty.  And when Jacob looked at himself, he saw a beggar and a fugitive who had his strength and his wits and that was about it.  He was sort of like the ten spies who said, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”  He himself did not realize how exploitable that made him.  He thought he was buying time to figure out how he might get the wife he sought, but in fact, he was heading into a long period of labor, frustration, and misery.

Did that have to happen?  Was this inevitable?  Given that Jacob showed up without a penny in hand, with only his staff, and given that Jacob had left home on bad terms, did he have no choice but to fall into the hands of Laban as he did?  Did he have no choice but to show up with “Take advantage of me” written across his forehead?  The answer is no because Jacob had been blessed twice by his father Isaac.  Even if once was unwittingly, the second time Isaac blessed him consciously and intentionally as his heir, as the ruler over his relatives, and as one who would inherit the land of Canaan.  On top of that, Jacob had been blessed by God himself directly.  God had said that he would be with Jacob to give him success.  God had said that Jacob’s descendants would spread out in all directions and would inherit the land.  Jacob was a mighty prince who had not yet received what was to come to him, but wealth and honor and favor and a future were all his.

Surely he could have presented himself to Laban in that capacity.  He could have told Laban and Rachel all these things and stated plainly right up front, on that first day, that he had come on his parents’ commission and with the express blessing of the living God to take a wife from the daughters of Laban, and that God had led him directly to Rachel and to Laban’s household.  Even a man like Laban could not have missed the spiritual power and force behind these words.  He would have been in awe of the man whom God had honored, and who had in return honored God.

In spite of Jacob’s appearance, this would have made sense to Laban, because it had been many years earlier that Laban had received Abraham’s servant.  Laban knew something of the wealth that his sister had married into, and that she herself had been sent off with several maidservants to accompany her.  (GMW)  So being the heir of Isaac meant something.  Laban also knew the sovereign guidance and ordination of God that had so ordered everything that everyone could see that it was God’s will for Rebekah to return and marry Isaac.  This was the same God who was guiding Jacob.  If Jacob had spoken in faith, with the power of God with him, he might have gotten agreement on the marriage the very first day and set off to return home with her even the very next day, much like Abraham’s servant did.

Do you see the parallels between your own situation and that of Jacob?  Who are you?  Nothing much in yourself, frankly.  You are not all that wealthy or wise or well-connected.  You may not be much better than a beggar as far as your own resources are concerned.  But if you are in Christ, you are an adopted son or daughter of God.  You are part of that royal priesthood that makes you a prince and a priest.  Yours is the kingdom of God, and you shall inherit the earth.  That is the reality about you.  But do you conduct yourself accordingly?

As a Christian, it is right and fitting that you should conduct yourself with dignity.  Keep yourself clean; you are from a noble family.  This will not happen through the power of positive thinking, but through the power of God, which comes to you as you have fellowship with him.  Pray!  Pray, pray, pray.  And then live up to your vow that Jesus Christ is Lord and live up to the Bethel privileges and Bethel obligations and Bethel vows you have made.

We gain nothing by giving into worldly men and accommodating ourselves to their ways and their expectations.  Do not enter into any interaction or relationship, not eating together or working together, except as an avowedly Christian man determined by God’s grace to live out your Christianity.  We are always in danger of conforming to the pattern of this world even when we make it known that we are Christians.  But how much greater is that danger when the people we are interacting with don’t recognize our Christianity, and we ourselves seem to have forgotten about it for a time.  Do not lean onto your own understanding.

Proposal

Third, look at Jacob’s proposal.  Laban asked him to name his own salary.  That sounds like an open door for Jacob to state his intent that he wanted to marry Rachel.  If it was his design to work in exchange for the promise of marriage to Rachel, he could have offered far less.  According to one source, seven years of work was fully three times the dowry of that age.  But he offered seven years.  Why?  There were probably two main reasons.  As one who had shown up penniless, he wanted to show his worth and work off some of his shame.  He wanted to show his eagerness and be generous, and he did not want to risk being turned down by Laban.  But also in the back of his mind was his fear of Esau back home.  Finding a wife had been his pretense to get him away from Esau, and he was afraid to face Esau again.  Why make this any sooner than it has to be?

Jacob reasoned based on his own understanding, but the divine perspective was different.  Proverbs 16:7 says, “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies live at peace with him.”  If Jacob had done what was right in God’s sight, God would have taken care of the Esau problem.  And as I already said, God could have made Laban willing to give up his daughter immediately if only Jacob had trusted in the Lord from the start.  Beyond all that, God had a clear will for where Jacob ought to be.  God had promised Jacob Canaan.  His father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham had made great sacrifices to stay there.  At Bethel, God explicitly promised Jacob, “I will bring you back to this land.”  That is what ought to have been behind Jacob’s proposal once he got to that point.

Pain

Finally, look at what Jacob’s own understanding led to.  Jacob thought he was pretty clever.  When it came to scheming, he was a big fish in the small pond of Isaac’s household. By his own scheming, he had gotten the birthright blessing that he had wanted, and other than having to leave his home in a hurry, he didn’t seem to have any consequences or pay any price for his underhanded ways.  And initially everything seems to be going wonderfully.  He arrived at just the right place.  He met a young woman from just the right family, and she was beautiful.  He was welcomed into the home of this family.  The man of the house, Laban, said to him, “You are my own flesh and blood.”  Laban was welcoming him in as a member of the family.  He had work to do, and his work was appreciated.  Then he even had the opportunity to name his own wages.  Everything was going great.  Jacob was navigating life wonderfully.

But Jacob was not as clever as he thought, and he was going to reap the fruits of leaning onto his own puny understanding.  Laban was a craftier man.  When Laban invites Jacob to name his own wages, that sounds very generous.  What could be better than to name your own terms?  But what Jacob does not realize is that Laban is changing Jacob’s status from an honored relative and a partner in the family business to a hired servant.  The word for “serve” or “service,” sometimes translated as “work,” appears seven times in verses 15 through 30.  Jacob served Laban.  That is what a slave or a hired man does, not an adopted son.  Furthermore, even though marriage had not been discussed before that, it was probably clear to everyone that Jacob was interested in Rachel, and Laban was going to use that to bind Jacob to a long-term contract to enrich Laban and to keep Jacob from going back to the Promised Land.

Since we know what was to come, we can also see hints of Laban’s duplicity even in their initial arrangement.  When Jacob said, “I’ll serve you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel,” Laban simply said, “It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man.”  He doesn’t say Rachel’s name.  He doesn’t identify her in particular.  And he doesn’t even express any sort of commitment.  It’s like he looks at the contract and gives a little nod, but he doesn’t sign it.  And Jacob doesn’t catch on to any of this.  Joshua and the elders of Israel entered into a covenant with the Gibeonites because they did not pray, and it was the same situation here.  Laban was crooked, and Jacob deserved it.

After seven years, it was time for the wedding.  In those days, the whole town would be invited, and the wedding celebration would go on for seven days and seven nights.  The custom was at the end of the first day, when night had come, the father of the bride would bring the bride to the bridegroom in the bridegroom’s tent.  It would already be dark, and they would consummate their marriage.

Laban brought his daughter to Jacob, as the custom was.  But verse 25 says, “When morning came, there was Leah!”  It was Leah!  When we read that, it is a shock even to read it.  Leah!  After seven years of hard work for Rachel, Jacob wakes up and sees next to him a woman that he did not want and certainly did not expect.  Leah!  What happened?

It is truly hard to imagine a more painful shock, and yet Jacob was reaping exactly what he had sown.  After seven years, Jacob is very eager to have Rachel for his wife, and Laban exploits his eagerness.  He knows that Jacob is hungry for Rachel, and he takes advantage of that to make a very hard bargain.  Seven more years, and you can have Rachel.  At this point you should remember Esau coming in from hunting.  He was hungry.  He wanted the stew, so Jacob took advantage of it to make a hard bargain:  “Sell me your birthright!”  Esau was trapped.  He did not have to give in but he was weak and he did give in.  This is now coming back to Jacob.

As Jacob sat in that tent on the first night of his wedding celebration, he was blind.  This blindness was not due to old age or cataracts, but to darkness, to a veil, and perhaps to too much alcohol.  Jacob was just as blind on that night when he thought Leah was Rachel as his father was blind when Jacob deceived his father into thinking he was Esau.  A blind man who deceived a blind father is getting payback.  In Jacob’s past, he, the younger, had pretended to be the older.  Now it is reversed.  Leah pretended to be her younger sister.  In verse 25, Jacob cried out, “Why have you deceived me?”  Esau used exactly the same word of Jacob, when he said in Genesis 27:36, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me these two times.”  The deceiver is complaining that he is deceived.

Jacob had never confessed his sin.  He had never sought reconciliation with Esau.  He had never humbled himself before his father Isaac. He had gotten away with all of it, as far as he was concerned.  He had gotten what he wanted, and now it was coming back to him.  Now he knew the pain of being deceived.  We tend to think, “What I dish out, I can take.  What I do is actually reasonable, and if someone did the same to me, that would be fine.”  God brings back on us what we did to others and we find that it is painful indeed.  It strikes us to the core of our being.  God used the deception that Jacob was subjected to and continued to be subjected to for years to come to wear down his own readiness to deceive, and to teach Jacob the folly of relying on his own understanding.

The message here is a simple and straightforward one.  Do not lean onto your own understanding.  It is foolish.  You are not as perceptive or clever or clear-thinking as you think you are.  No one is.  God has so formed and fashioned us that we will never have the knowledge of good and evil on our own, and any notion that we might this time around is just the deception of the devil.

The number one way you can know whether you are leaning onto your own understanding is whether or not you are praying.  Jacob was so accustomed to scheming that he didn’t even know when he was at it.  I am sure that he would not have said that he was not trusting in the Lord.  Joshua did not gather the elders of Israel together and say, “This time let’s lean onto our own understanding.”  They simply did it because they did not pray, without being conscious of what they were doing.  God is eager to hear and answer our prayers.  Our Lord said that if human parents, who are evil, know how to give good gifts, and we can add, good answers, how much more eager is your heavenly Father to give good gifts to hear and answer our prayers as we come to him daily in our time of need.

I would add here, seek counsel.  This had not come up through this chapter because Jacob was literally five hundred miles and about thirty days of travel away from his household.  If you are thirty days’ travel away from the nearest person who can give you godly counsel, you too are excused from this one.  But you are not.  Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of a fool seems right to him, but the wise man listens to advice.”  How often is it the case that you think you have considered everything relevant to the decision at hand, but the man of wisdom sees what you did not and says to go in a totally different way.  But wise counselors are not going to come pursuing you.  Take the time and have the humility to present yourself to them and present your circumstances and your decision to those who are able to direct you in the way of the Lord.

Ultimately, there is no reason that God should lead any of us in paths of righteousness, because we all have sinned.  We have all leaned onto our own understanding.  But even in the life of Jacob, there is a foreshadowing of the ultimate servant of God.  Jesus Christ served in the wilderness.  He served in exile.  He suffered hardship for his bride.  He is the greater Jacob.  He served for his Rachel, his elect, for whom his service did not seem long because of the love he had for his church.  Christ loved his church and gave himself up for her, and at the end of his service, he receives his bride in joy.

He is ready to receive you as his own, as his beloved, as a member of his holy church.  He will not deal with you like Laban, exploiting you for his own gain because he has no need in himself.  Repent of your sins and put your faith in Jesus Christ today.  Our God is a faithful God.  Seek a life of intimate fellowship with him today on the basis of Jesus Christ.  Amen.