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The Search for One True Love

Summit Life / J.D. Greear
The Truth Network Radio
January 15, 2025 9:00 am

The Search for One True Love

Summit Life / J.D. Greear

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January 15, 2025 9:00 am

The movies often make it seem like romance is the answer to all of our problems. Guy kisses girl, and they live happily ever after. But we all know that real life doesn’t work that way! No matter how happy your relationship might be, it’s not a guarantee of a happy life. As Pastor J.D. continues our series called, The Whole Story, he’s explaining the key to true, lasting joy, regardless of your relationship status.

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Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Okay, so have you noticed how movies often suggest that romance is the answer to all your problems? Guy visits small town, kisses girl, and they live happily ever after raising chickens.

I mean, come on people, we just finished a Hallmark Christmas, right? But we know real life doesn't always work that way. No matter how perfect your relationship might seem, it's simply not a guarantee of happiness. Today, Pastor J.D. explains the key to true lasting joy, regardless of your relationship status. It's part of our teaching series titled The Whole Story, and today's message is called The Search for One True Love. But before we dive in, be sure to stick around to the end of the program to hear more about our mission here at Summit Life. For now, let's jump into today's teaching. Here's Pastor J.D. So we come now to a story that is as profound as it is odd.

It has literally everything in it. There is betrayal, there is sex, there is scandal, there are things that just look insane. In many ways, it feels like a modern story because it shows you the crazy things that we'll do for love. Have you ever known somebody that just did something that you thought was absolutely insane in the name of love, like move across country with no commitment from the other person at all?

I've known people to do that, people that quit their job, people who have alienated their friends and their family. I heard of one poor guy who fell so in love with this girl that shortly after they started dating, her brother, or who he thought was her brother, went into the hospital and needed a kidney transplant. So to impress her, he donated his kidney, only for it to come out after the operation was over that this guy was actually not her brother but her ex-boyfriend that she was still in love with. Shortly after the operation, she broke up with the generous kidney donor so that she could marry her fake brother.

Just insane, it seems like, right? Well, believe it or not, all those things would be small potatoes compared to what happens in this story in Genesis 29. I'm going to explain to you that in a much deeper sense this story shows us, regardless of what romantic situation you're in or what you want for the future or even what stage of life you're in, this story shows us the search that each of us is on in life. Genesis 29, let me give you the context. Abraham is the guy who is the patriarch of the entire Jewish nation. Abraham is the guy to whom the promises are given and so the book of Genesis follows his family. Abraham, a member of sterile and frail, he's an old man, he has a miracle baby named Isaac. Isaac is going to have two sons. One is named Jacob and the other is going to be named Esau.

Jacob and Esau were twins but they could not have been more different. Esau was what many people would call a man's man. He ate lots of red meat. He liked to hunt. We assume that he really liked sports.

He probably drove an F-250. We also know that he was really hairy. We know that because his name literally means, Esau means red and hairy. Interesting note to me is that they gave him this name at birth which I just feel like that's unusual for a baby.

It'd be like naming your baby fuzzy. Evidently he came out of the womb looking like a chia pet. He was also the firstborn, the firstborn which meant that he got what we call the blessing. Now real quick biblical theology lesson, let me explain the blessing to you. In every family in the ancient world, one of the kids, almost always the oldest, got the family inheritance which means that they got the majority of the property and the assets. They got the right to the family name. They got to be the patriarch of future generations. For the descendants of Abraham, there was this added element of inheriting the promise to bring forth the Messiah that had been promised to Abraham.

So there would be one son in every family that carried the messianic seed. Well that is assumed to be Esau because he is the firstborn. Now Jacob, his twin brother, was the opposite of Esau in just about every way.

Jacob was more, shall we say, genteel. Well Isaac prefers Esau over Jacob and he makes that pretty clear and this of course is really hurtful to Jacob. So Jacob schemes away to steal the blessing of the firstborn from his brother Esau.

I don't have time to go deep into the details of this majestic ruse but here's the basic gist of it. Isaac is really old and he thinks he's going to die. So he says I've got to confer the blessing officially on one of my sons and he's going to do Esau. So he tells Esau to go out into the field and hunt him up some deer and prepare it as a stew and then when he gets back they'll eat it and he'll confirm the covenant blessing onto him and then Isaac assumes that he'll die. So Esau leaves early in the morning to go out and hunt down the deer and Jacob sees his opportunity. Jacob takes a goat and he makes a stew then he dresses up in Esau's clothes and even takes the skin of the goat and attaches it to the back of his arms and his neck so he feels like Esau which I don't know what that says about Esau when somebody wants to impersonate you and they wrap themselves in a dead goat so that they feel and smell like you but that's a bit disgusting.

The man's man thing is one thing but that's taking it too far. So Jacob walks in with you know Esau's clothes and the stew and he's got the you know the goat hair and the smell all over him he walks in and he says hi dad it's Esau. But Isaac is so old and he can see so poorly and hear so poorly that he falls for it and he confers the blessing onto Jacob thinking that Jacob is Esau. Well Esau returns and comes in with his stew and he says dad I'm here and then Isaac realizes what's happened and he says son it's too late. Now it all seemed to me at this point like Isaac would have just you know when he realized the mistake would have been like oh well I take it back you know and but evidently the blessing the covenant was irrevocable when it had been given.

There was a no takebacks clause that they threw in there. Jacob has deceived his dad and betrayed his brother and stolen this blessing. Jacob's name literally means deceiver which I also thought was an odd name to give a baby. Liar. You name one of your kids Fuzzy and the other one Liar.

I just feel like they could have done better than that. But it's a play on words in Hebrew. You see when Jacob and Esau were born, Esau was born first as I mentioned and as he was coming out of the birth canal it says that a little hand comes out after Esau and grabs a hold of Esau's heel like you know they're in a fight and he wants to get out first so he wants to pull him back in. So they named the first one you know Harry and they named the second kid they named him heel grabber.

In Hebrew heel grabber is Yaqob but it has a double meaning it has another meaning in Hebrew and that double meaning is trickster or struggler. So he's named heel grabber at birth but the name fits also as a description of Jacob's character as he gets older as a deceiver. Well of course Esau is fighting mad and so he vows to kill Jacob. So Jacob hops in his Miata and he zooms off to somewhere else. His mom tells him he's got some relatives in a far-off place called Haran so Jacob heads there.

Eventually he arrives at the house of an uncle named Laban which brings us to the main part of this story for today. Laban has two daughters. One of the daughters is named Rachel and she is described for us in Genesis 29 17 here. Rachel was beautiful in face and figure which is a Hebrew way of saying that she was super hot. Literally beautiful in face means she had a cute face figure means she had a very attractive body so that's Rachel. Now the other sister was named Leah and well she was not hot. The narrator indicates that to us in two not so subtle ways. First the rest of that verse Genesis 29 17 says Leah had weak eyes but Rachel was beautiful in face and figure.

Now we're not exactly sure. Scholars are not sure what weak eyes means but what we know it doesn't mean is that she just couldn't see very well because notice it's put into contrast to Rachel's beauty. If it has simply meant that she was nearsighted it would have said Leah had weak eyes but Rachel could see really really really really far. That would be the contrast. The fact that it's in contrast to Rachel's beauty means that her eyes somehow messed up how she looked.

Maybe they protruded really badly from her face and kind of messed up the look of her face or most probably it meant that, how do I say this, when she was facing east one of her eyes was checking on things up north and the other one was monitoring activity down in the south. That's probably what it means. The other way that we the narrator lets us know that Leah was not very attractive is that Leah's name in Hebrew literally means cow. You say well maybe maybe that had a different implication in Hebrew.

Nope. Calling somebody a cow is an insult in any culture that's universal and if your name happens to be Leah that is not my fault okay. I know it means something different in English but in the original Hebrew that's what it meant okay. So when Jacob first gets there he is of course smitten with Rachel and I know you're thinking what a sexist pig. He only evaluates women by their face and their body. The Bible is so backwards. Yeah I am so glad that we are not part of a society that any longer does that. Where guys don't evaluate girls first by how they look and what their bodies are like. We are so far advanced past that.

So whatever all right. So let me tell you the story of how Jacob and Rachel meet because it doesn't really have any bearing on the points I want to make today but it's just super awesome and you can't skip it. Genesis 29 one if you got your Bible open there Jacob finally has gotten to Haran where his uncle Laban lives. He literally has nothing. He's an outcast from his family. He is friendless. He is penniless.

I envision him as a guy with nothing but a guitar strapped to his back and a 300 pair of Viscata jeans around his waist and a Prada Italian loafers on his feet and that's all he's got and his Miata. So he comes up to the village where his extended family lives and he he slumps down on this big old rock covering the well there. Now here's the description of the rock verse two.

The stone in the well's mouth was really large it was huge. When all the flocks were gathered there the shepherds would you know together plural the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well. Well that's verse two and three. Verse six you know there she comes walking up the most beautiful girl he's ever seen and so Jacob I love this.

Verse 10 now as soon as Jacob saw he rolled the stone from the well's mouth by himself. Little old gentile Jacob there is something about a good looking girl that gives this guy the ability to perform super human feats of strength. Okay so they meet they get to talking and it turns out that not only is Rachel really pretty but they're related. As I mentioned her dad Laban is Jacob's uncle which makes them that's right first cousins.

You would think that that would have quelled any romantic interest right there but oh no this is the old testament baby and in the old testament being cousins with somebody was actually a turn on. So Jacob says to Laban I want to marry my first cousin Rachel and Laban says well you know I mean we're related and everything but there's you still got to pay some kind of bride price. So Jacob volunteers I'll work for seven years to get her. Verse 18 now that is an exorbitant price to put that in perspective the going rate for dowries in those days would have been between 30 and 40 shekels so offering 130 shekels meant that Jacob was offering more than four times the usual amount that you paid in order to marry somebody. Right now you may think well that's really sweet but what you're supposed to get the image of here is here is a guy who is obsessed.

He is willing to do anything to get this girl. Laban knows a sucker when he sees one so he agrees and Jacob works for seven years. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. To learn more about this ministry including how to partner with us financially visit jdgreer.com. Summit Life has only been on the air for a relatively short time but thankfully the widespread accessibility of free radio has helped it endure for generations. For instance we recently heard from a man in prison who said I don't miss an episode of Summit Life on 105.5 in Raleigh. He told us how he found God in his isolation cell. He said there on the floor of my solitary confinement cell I confessed hours worth of sins to God crying out begging him to change me and change me he did. Everything about me changed and that's just one example of gospel impact that we try to steward here at Summit Life through this program. If you've been inspired and challenged by stories like this one from our friend in prison please consider helping someone else hear this teaching by giving a generous gift to the ministry right now.

Call us at 866-335-5220 or visit jdgreer.com. Thanks for your generosity and faithfulness. Now let's return to today's teaching. Once again here's Pastor JD. Now again there's a verse that you want to read is really sweet but it has a different implication in the narrative. Verse 20, these seven years seem like just a day because of his love for her. Now again that's sweet right but what it means is that every day he got up thinking about Rachel and he went to bed thinking about Rachel.

He's not doing for anything except for seven years is except being obsessed with Rachel. The seven years are up verse 21 and so Jacob comes to Laban and says I have fulfilled my contract now give me my wife so we can be married. Now that actually is not a very good translation in English. In Hebrew what it literally says is I fulfilled my contract give me my wife so we can have sex and you say well that sounds kind of crude.

Yeah Robert Alter the Jewish commentator on Genesis says it is uncharacteristically crass and crude that ancient narrators never put that kind of stuff in a narrative. So the fact that he puts it in there means that he's trying to show some of the vulgarity of what's going on in Jacob's mind. He is obsessed with Rachel.

Just give her to me I've been thinking about this for seven years so that we can have sex. You see Jacob does what a lot of people who deal with deep disappointment in life do. They search for their answer to their life's problems in finding that one true romantic love. Someone they think will fulfill them. Someone who will give them meaning.

Someone who will make their life worth living. I've described it before like you know Jacob most guys are like you know they're floating they're drowning in a sea of loneliness and despair and low self-esteem. And along by floats a five foot two blonde-headed life preserver.

What does a drowning man do when he sees a life preserver? He reaches out and he clings to it and he clings to it for dear life and he suffocates the life out of her because he's looking for something in her that she was never designed to give to him. That's what Jacob is doing with Rachel. Well it comes time for the ceremony. In comes Laban with Jacob's bride whom he's worked for for now seven years.

She's wearing of course the traditional veil which covers not only the face but the whole head. They go through the ceremony and Jacob is so happy that he he really pounds down the booze at the reception and after the party he takes his veiled wife back to his tent in the dark of course and they spend their first night together. For the first time in his life Jacob feels like something has gone right. Verse 25 and Jacob awoke the next morning and behold it was Leah.

Behold indeed it was Leah. Some of you have some bad honeymoon stories. I have a couple of bad honeymoon stories. I've told you I think some of them. I have one where my wife and I went snorkeling on our honeymoon and you know I was in the water first and I see her jump in and you know she got this red bathing suit she bought for our honeymoon and so we've been married for three days so I swim up to her underwater you know all secretive and I start tickling her and you know just like a man should only tickle his wife let's just leave it at that and she's kicking and thrashing and yelling and I'm thinking this is hilarious after like 20 seconds I pop up out of the water it's not her it's not her and it's just a girl saying wrong wife wrong wife and I look up at the boat and there's my wife and this girl's husband both kind of looking into the water like what's going on so I put my head underwater and I swam as far as probably a mile and a half before I emerged I find my wife like an hour later and I just said I don't want to talk about it um so I have a bad honeymoon story but there ain't nothing that's ever happened to any of you like this um Jacob goes back of course he's furious and he says to Laban what's the deal Laban says oh it's just it's not the custom in our country to marry off the younger before the older now I've always wondered why Jacob didn't say back well that would have been a great point to make seven years ago no custom gives Laban the right to commit fraud Jacob never even insists that Laban honor the contract Jacob does not so much as offer a single word of argument why not why not because I think when he says to Laban why have you deceived me I think he realizes that it's the exact same phrase that Isaac had said to him in fact it's the exact same way it's written in Hebrew and when Laban says to him it's our custom to honor the first board Jacob remembers how he had stolen the right of the firstborn from his older brother just like Isaac had reached out in the dark thinking it was Esau and Jacob deceived him so Jacob has now reached out in the dark for Rachel and Laban has deceived him Jacob is wrought face to face with who he is he's so obsessed with Rachel however but not even this can deter him so he gets Laban to agree that if it'll work for another seven years then he'll get Rachel as his wife too graciously Laban gives Rachel to him right away instead of making him wait the seven years it's like he gets Rachel on credit he got Leah through the layaway program but Rachel he gets immediately on credit um so in the space of one week he's gotten two sisters as wives who one is extremely jealous of the other one what kind of house do you think that yielded for Jacob I want you to think about this though how bad must this have been for poor Leah I mean she's a person right and all her life she's grown up in the shadow of her stunning sister and the only way her deadbeat dad can get her married off is to get some guy crunk and swap her out in the dark which is why verse 31 the narrative switches to her verse 31 but because Leah was unloved the lord let her have a child while Rachel was childless so Leah became pregnant had a son she named him Reuben which in Hebrew means see a son for she said the lord has seen he has noticed my misery and now my husband will love me you see here's Leah and Leah is thinking Jacob doesn't love me I'm not very pretty but you know what Rachel can't have kids and I can so I know that when I have a son I know that when I have a son then that'll make me lovable and then Jacob will love me so she has a son and she says see a son don't you love me now do you think it works well look at the very next verse verse 33 she soon became pregnant again and had another son she named this one Simeon which in Hebrew sounds like the word heard for she said the lord has heard that I was unloved and has given me another son so did the one son make Jacob love her no because she's still unloved in this verse right so she's thinking the first son didn't work but now the second son it'll work God has heard my misery and God has answered my prayer by giving me a son that'll make Jacob love me you think it works the second time all right we'll keep reading verse 34 and again she became pregnant and had a son she named this one Levi which is the Hebrew word for attached because she said surely now my husband will feel attached to me he'll feel affection to me since I have given him now three sons just like Jacob she is dealing with her disappointment in life for by reaching out for that one true love also when we deal with disappointment in life we almost always respond the same way right well I didn't find it in that romance so it'll be the next romance that's what it'll do it that'll make my life complete not in this job oh but I know if I get another job then my career will feel complete and then I'll be happy we're just like Leah we keep having sons and thinking that one more son is going to solve the problem another relationship another attempt another job but it always ends up the same and then in verse 35 we get the gospel this is the best part of the whole story verse 35 once again she became pregnant and she had another son she named this one Judah which means literally praise to God for she said now I will praise the Lord and then she stopped trying to have children and you're like what gospel I don't see any Jesus in my place in there just let's you quit having gifts all right a couple things in Genesis there's two ways to write God's name one way it comes from Hebrew Elohim and it just means God the creator the other way and whenever in your English Bible whenever it's Elohim it's just god that's how it's written in your English Bible whenever it's the other name which is Yahweh or Jehovah it's going to be written capital L-O-R-D and Yahweh or Jehovah was the name that was given to God as his covenant name it was the God of the promise that gave himself to Abraham and said I'll always be with you and I'll always bless you I'll give you salvation and I'll go with you everywhere and I'll take care of you and always be your God and that's the covenant name and it only is for people who have entered into that covenant so the fact that she says praise be to God means that I am now finding my joy I'm finding my joy in God's covenant with me and not in my ability to have sons that's the name that Leah uses and what it means is praise to the God because of the covenant he's made with me in other words Leah stopped trying to earn the love of Jacob through having sons and receive the love of God that was given to her as a gift and that became the source of her joy and the source of her praise in life here's what's more Judah is going to grow up to be the ancestor of a very important great great great great great great grandchild Jesus is going to be referred to as the lion of the tribe of Judah this would be the son through whom Jesus Christ himself would come in other words listen to this her lineage became beautiful not because she had some physical beauty to pass on to them but because God gave beauty as a gift in giving Jesus right in the middle of her painful ugly unloved life Leah learned the gospel an encouraging message from pastor JD Greer on summit life pastor JD we're so grateful for every donation that helps keep summit life on the air can you share with us how these gifts are used to advance the gospel molly again i i appreciate that question because here's the heart of it you're giving fuels everything we do to share God's word from daily radio broadcast to regional tv programs yeah i'm the one with the microphone and i'm i'm leading a lot of these discussions but it we are unable to do that without our generous supporters that enable us to to get on the air and get into these places and so thank you for those of you that that so generously support us and make it possible for us to do this every gift you give helps us extend our reach and deepen our impact i would invite you to learn more about our ministry and to prayerfully considering being a part of it not to give to it but to give through it to the advance of the gospel in the world and you can also take advantage of a lot of free resources we have all that stuff is on jdgrier.com and when you're checking out all these resources available don't miss our new 2025 scripture memory cards and as our way of saying thanks for your one-time donation of $45 or more we'll send you this brand new exclusive resource ask for your set today when you call 866-335-5220 or you can give online at jdgrier.com i'm molly vidovich make sure you join us again thursday when pastor jd wraps up this message about jacob and the search for one true love see you thursday thursday for summit life with jd career today's program was produced and sponsored by jd career ministries you
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-15 10:06:38 / 2025-01-15 10:16:51 / 10

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