Leah [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Allen Wright. Ignoring the biblical teaching that God has already created this person and called all creation good, we attempt to recreate the people we love in our own image of goodness. This has more to do with our own feelings of inadequacy and need than it does the person we are diligently trying to recreate.

What we're really saying is not you are not good enough, but you're not meeting my need to feel good about myself. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series titled God Used Who?

And you may just be surprised, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAllen.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 Allen Wright. Are you ready for some good news? You don't have to labor for love. Love can't be earned.

It is by its very definition a free gift, so it can only be received with gratitude. And once you understand this, it'll lift striving out of your life. In this world, we're not promised that the people who should love us will love us, but we are promised that the love of God is from everlasting to everlasting. We're going to take a look at Hidden Jewel, an unheralded woman in the Word. Her name is Leah, one of Jacob's wives, and her story is recorded in Genesis chapter 29.

This is, there's no candy coating it. This is a dysfunctional family, and you got Leah and Rachel, and you got their maidservants Zilpah and Bilhah and everybody trying to have babies and not knowing who's in whose bed. Years ago when I first preached on this text, I really liked my title. It was taken from an old TV show, Desperate Housewives. This is Leah.

It's Genesis chapter 29, and it's verse 16. Now Laban had two daughters. The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah's eyes were weak.

What's interesting is scholars don't really know for sure how to translate that, whether it should be weak or lovely. We're not sure, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance, and Jacob loved Rachel, and he said, I'll serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel. Laban said, it is better that I give her to you than I should give her to any other man.

Stay with me. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, so Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her. Then Jacob said to Laban, give me my wife that I may go into her for my time is completed. So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast, but in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went into her. Laban gave his female servant Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her servant, and in the morning behold it was Leah, and Jacob said to Leah, what is this you've done to me? Did I not serve you for Rachel?

Why then have you deceived me? Laban said, it is not so done in our country to give the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we'll give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years. So Jacob did so and completed her week. Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. Laban gave his female servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her servant.

So Jacob went into Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah and served Laban for another seven years. When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren, and Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, because the Lord has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me. She conceived again and bore a son and said, because the Lord has heard that I'm hated, he's given me this son also, and she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son and said, now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I've borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi, and she conceived again and bore a son and said, this time I will praise the Lord. Therefore she called his name Judah.

Then she ceased bearing. If I change, he'll love me. If I do what he wants, he'll love me. If I labor and labor and labor, he'll love me. Leah thinks, but it doesn't work.

It never works, because love can't be bought. We're going to learn all of this from Leah, the man who didn't love her, and the God who did. Well, like I said, it's a dysfunctional family, and it's in a culture where maybe to modern sensibilities, it's a little offensive to even read a story like this, because the place of women was such a low place that they held. In many ways, as you study the role of women in the scriptures, the way Jesus interacted with women, what you'll see is there's really a radical appreciation and acceptance of women that was not known in the culture itself.

So here's a culture in which Leah found herself to be in a fairly powerless situation. It's not something that I identify very well with, because I'm married to Ann, and also my daughter Abigail. Our son's been in college for four years, so I've been living with two women for the last four years. You'd think that I would learn some things about women from living with them for four years.

I haven't really that much. I'm just confused sometimes, and I'm a little worried about them, because neither my wife nor my daughter is really a country music fan, but they've been recently, I've noticed, listening a good bit to the music of Carrie Underwood, who I thought, well, it's because she has some songs like Jesus Take the Wheel and a song I Think About Baptism, and I thought maybe it was that, but I noticed that they're actually listening more to some other songs of hers, and I'm kind of realizing she has sort of specializes in songs about women that get back at the men who've hurt them, and I'm worried about that. She's got a song that's called Before He Cheats, and it goes like this. Right now he's probably slow dancing with a bleach blonde tramp, and she's probably getting frisky. Right now he's probably buying her some fruity little drink because she can't shoot whiskey. Right now he's probably up behind her with a pool stick showing her how to shoot a combo, and he don't know that I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats.

I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires. Maybe next time he'll think Before He Cheats. Concerned me further when I looked into some of her other songs and realized there's one of them called Blown Away, and it's about a girl that lets her abusive father stay drunk on the couch and runs down and tornado blows him away, and then there's another one called Two Cadillacs about two women that found out they were sharing the same cheating man, and the Cadillacs pull up at the funeral and they're winking at each other, so they were killed demands what I think happened in that song, so I'm a little worried about songs that my women. Leah didn't live in a world where she could take a Louisville Slugger to Jacob's Campbell's Hooves. She was in a vulnerable position as was Rachel. She couldn't just say well if Jacob doesn't love me I'll just move on.

I can get a job anywhere. Wasn't like that. The story to understand it really you have to if you're not familiar with you have to understand the story of Jacob. The story is as much about Jacob as it is about about Leah. Jacob one of my favorite characters in the Bible is just so identified with Jacob.

He was a struggler from the beginning, a striver. He always had this feeling that he wasn't blessed, and he had to be something else before he could really be blessed. This was part of the theme of everything that carries into this is Jacob has this idea that if I could just be my brother Esau then I'd really be blessed because he was the firstborn and so he actually deceives their father Isaac into thinking that Jacob is Esau and Isaac is old and blind and he's tricked and he blesses Jacob accidentally and as he does so he's releasing a double portion of the inheritance.

He's declaring it as if you're the firstborn. This is Jacob's way of trying to get blessed. He's a trickster. He's a conniver. He's striving. He's always wrestling, wrestling with God, wrestling with himself, wrestling with other people. The reason that Jacob is alone in this scene where we see him marrying Leah and Rachel is because he's on the run.

What he did to his brother Esau made Esau so mad that Esau wants to kill him and so he is exiled from his family. He's alone. He's on the run. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, which you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages says, the incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy his embrace, revel in his love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. And he comes and he sees Rachel, we didn't read this part, but he sees Rachel and it just falls in love instantly. Just falls in love, like love at first glance.

And he's infatuated with her. I don't believe in such a thing as love at first sight. I know some of you, you've been married for 50 years and you barely knew each other and you got married.

And praise God for that. But if you want to get married next week and you come to our office, we're going to say, hold on a minute and take you through the Prepare and Rich Inventory and postpone your engagement until we can be assured that you know each other. But this was, quote, love at first sight. He didn't know her. He didn't know her at all. Craig Barnes wrote an excellent book on the life of Jacob called Hustling God.

And I was rereading some portions this week. He said in his book, it's important to notice that his love had nothing to do with who Rachel was. I think he was in love before he met her. He loves not the woman, but the fantasy he'd been chasing for a long time. You can spend a lot of time looking for your fantasy love.

Then after you find a person who may fit the bill, you can spend even more time trying to make the fantasy come true. So he offers to work for her. It was customary that in that culture there would be a gift from the groom's family to the bride's family. It was sometimes called the bride price, which was not really accurate, especially in the Hebrew culture, because it wasn't like they were selling the bride.

But the, quote, bride price was a maximum of 50 shekels, usually. Well, Jacob volunteers. He is not asked for this. He just offers it up to work for Laban for seven years, because Jacob doesn't have anything. And so he doesn't have any other way of bringing the gift to the bride's family, except he's going to work it off like this.

And if you think that a shekel is about a month's wage for a laborer, or maybe even a half shekel would be a month's wage, to work seven years was going to be something that was going to be a pretty extravagant, really, bride price it was paid. He signed up to labor. There's something inside of Jacob that was always like that. He was one of those guys that thought nothing in this world comes for free, and if there's something good you need to work for it. That's the way he's always lived his life.

You got to find a way to get what you want. So ironically, he labors for love in the same way later, as we'll see, Leah labored for his love. And I just imagine the harder he worked, the greater the fantasy grew. He just had an image in his mind of this is what's going to make my life complete.

This is what's going to make me happy if I could just have Rachel, this woman that he fell in love with at first glance. And fantasies don't do us any good. Dreams and God-given vision and goals for our lives, these are good things, but fantasies, they actually just become like idols to us. And so he is led down this path of a fantasy, I think. People on drugs have fantasies, but when you're really walking with God, he'll put dreams in your hearts, but it's not a dream that says, if I can obtain this, then I'll be fulfilled. Instead, it is a fulfillment that comes through your relationship with God.

And then you're able to move forward with a sense of destiny. But he's thinking if I can have Rachel, then I'll be fulfilled. And one of the things that you have to recognize therefore is that because of everything that had gone on in Jacob's life, that when you get to Leah and you see how unloved she is, you realize reading the story, the problem's not Leah.

The problem is in Jacob. Again, Craig Barnes writes, ignoring the biblical teaching that God has already created this person and called all creation good, we attempt to recreate the people we love in our own image of goodness. This has more to do with our own feelings of inadequacy and need than it does the person we are diligently trying to recreate.

What we're really saying is not you are not good enough, but you're not meeting my need to feel good about myself. It's been so much time thinking that his fantasy, which is like an idol, is the thing that's going to make him finally feel blessed. It's the way Jacob always lived. And he's so much time working to obtain the fantasy. It was ironic that Jacob didn't really know Rachel and he didn't really know Leah. He thought that he did.

That's one of the things that happens sometimes with our idols. We think in our mind. We think, I know exactly what this is.

I know this is going to fulfill me. But you know, he didn't really know her. Augustine said that one of the great values of marriage is that it commits us to a mystery. It's a commitment marriage is, but you don't know everything about that person that you're marrying.

That's what's both wonderful and scary about it. You don't know everything. And so often in our relationships, if we want to bring great pain, we'll say things that box the other one in as if we know everything about them. I've told you before, Anne's uncle Stanley, who officiated our wedding the night before, he said, let me just tell you a story. He said, we were on our honeymoon and we were in a restaurant and we were looking around the restaurant and hardly any of the couples were talking to each other, just eating their food. And I looked over and there's one couple and they were older couple, and they were just leaning forward. They're talking to each other. And he thought, I just wonder what is so different about them?

I mean, they're the only ones other than us that seem to be really interested in each other. He said, I wonder if they're on a honeymoon too. And he went over and asked the man, he said, we're on our honeymoon. And he said, I've just noticed you guys were just talking to each other.

Like you're just so interested in each other. And he said, any chance that you guys are newly married? And the man just put his head back and laughed. He said, oh, we've been married for 53 years.

And Stan Lee looked at me today. He said, I decided right then to never say, oh, I know we're like the back of my hand. And he looked at Ann, he looked at me and he said, you've both been on this earth 22, 23 years. He said, if you were to share everything that's happened in your life, it'd take you 50 or 45 years to do that. He said, in the meantime, you're living life and there's so much other that you can be sharing in the midst of that. He said, there is something wonderful you can keep discovering about each other. You see, if you're going to stay in love, it means that you continue to fall in love because you're discovering more mystery that is there every day. But if you just have a fantasy of what you want someone to be and think that if you will be what I want you to be, then I will be complete.

You'll be too busy trying to create them into your own image of a fantasy to really actually enjoy the mystery of who they really are. That was Jacob. And so it is that Jacob is deceived.

The great deceiver is deceived. We're not told exactly what it means and we're not even sure of the translation. Leah had weak eyes or maybe she had tender eyes or maybe she had lovely eyes.

The Hebrew scholars are divided on how it should be translated. Maybe the Lord wants us to see it as both depending on who's looking at her. Who looks into her eyes and one might see something that's lovely and the other might see something that just seemed weak or unattractive.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. It was depending on who was looking at her and how he was looking at her. But in any event, what we know is that Rachel was striking in her physical appearance. Leah was the firstborn and she should be the one who was married first.

She should be blessed first with that. And Jacob wanted the secondborn. So Laban, who's clever, figures out a way to get seven years of free labor and get both his daughters married.

And you wonder, how in the world did this happen? And it's interesting, the Jewish Midrash, the rabbinical teachings that come alongside of the word as commentary, had created a story that lives in much of the Hebrew consciousness about the story of Rachel and Leah. And it goes like this, that Rachel and Jacob knew that Laban was a real trickster and that he might try to pull a stunt like this. Alan Wright, in part one of this teaching on Leah from the series, God used who? How God used unheralded women in astonishing ways.

And we've got Alan back here in the studio in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and today's final word. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you, and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, what you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages says, the incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy his embrace, revel in his love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860, or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, we've had to put a bookmark in the teaching for today. But at this moment, at this point, in our teaching of Leah and unheralded women in the Bible, what's the takeaway?

What do you want someone listening right now at this moment hanging on to this very next teaching that's coming in the next edition? The focus becomes the names of Leah's children, Reuben, Son, and Simeon, Levi. And what we're going to see is that Leah has lived that kind of life. If I produce a son, then my husband will really love me. And she finds out that doesn't work.

And you can almost see, Daniel, what we're going to discover in the naming of her children, the transformation that takes place in her life. Because you cannot find love by earning it because love is by definition free. So no matter what she might do for Jacob, it was never going to be the answer. She might do more to get his attention, but not his love. And so we're really learning about that love that comes from God. And it's got to be that love that comes from God in which we root our security. It's got to be in His love because the things of this world are just too transitory and unreliable. And so in the end, the story of Leah is about learning to live loved by God. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.