Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: A Sermon from Julius Kim

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Julius Kim: I’d invite you to turn to Genesis 29 for our scripture reading this morning. Let me add my welcome to pastor James, to all of you who are here today, to all of you watching online. Genesis 29 verses 15 to 35 will be the scripture reading. If you are able, if you can please stand for the reading of God’s word. People of God listen carefully for this is the word of the Lord. Then Laban said to Jacob because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me what shall your wages be? 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, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. Jacob loved Rachel and he said, I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.

Laban said it is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man, stay with me. 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 Laban, what is this that you have done to me? Did I not serve with 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 will give you the other one also in return for serving me another seven years. 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 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 am hated he has given me this son also and he 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 have born 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. Thus far the reading of God’s word, you may be seated. Let’s pray together. Father may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer, would you now speak to us through your word, speak to us words of life, words of hope, words of love, words of peace, especially in the midst of all the brokenness in our world and even the brokenness in our hearts. Would you powerfully speak to us now through your spirit and by your word we pray in Jesus name, amen.

I don’t know about you, but I love the Old Testament because in the Old Testament we find these wonderful stories of these heroic figures of faith. Wonderful heroes of faith that inspire us, challenge us and cause us to live our lives with courage and confidence, hope and joy. Think about the great chapter in the New Testament Hebrews chapter 11, that outlines for us all these heroes of the faith, right? All those who face the trials and temptations of life with courage and conviction, it totally inspires me, I’m sure it inspires you as well. But not all the stories of the old Testament go this way, do they? Surprisingly it doesn’t take very long as you read through the Old Testament that right next to the stories of faith and courage are actually stories of fear and compromise.

Think about the first couple Adam and Eve, it didn’t take very long until they turned their back on God. The first set of children, Cain and Abel didn’t take long until one brother murdered the other. And so I don’t know about you, but actually as I read these kinds of stories, I’m actually encouraged as well. Not just the heroic ones, but also the challenging ones, the difficult ones, because these stories of brokenness, loss and fear remind me that these people in the Old Testament that made it actually to the pages of Holy scripture are just like me. People who are looking for love in all the wrong places, people who don’t seek the grace they need and don’t deserve the grace they get. Did you hear that? People who don’t seek the grace and the love that they actually need and don’t deserve the grace and the love they actually get.

So what I want to do is explore this particular story, it’s not very heroic when you first look at it and see what it teaches us about our own hearts, our own lives. So I want to take a look at this story through the lens of the three characters that we find in this story. The character of Jacob, Leah, and Judah. And though there are more characters let me focus on that. I want to do this by looking at the desperation of Jacob, the longing of Leah and the hope of Judah. So let’s take a look at this. First of all, Jacob. One of the first things you see in this story is Jacob’s utter desperation and desire. Let’s remember how we got here, what are we doing here by this time in this story in Genesis? What is Jacob doing at Laban’s house?

Remember God promises to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham to bless his family so much so that the Messiah would actually come from this family, from Abraham’s family, the Messiah himself. And so God blesses Abraham and Sarah with the son, the first of the promised seed, Isaac. Isaac finds and marries Rebecca and they receive twins from the Lord, but as you know, these are not ordinary twins. God states that the older will serve the younger and in spite of this prophecy however, Isaac actually loved the older son Esau. And so think about the relational dynamics of this dysfunctional family. The father loves the first son, the mother loves the second son, it must have been awkward to say the least. In fact, when it’s finally time to give the blessing from father to son, Jacob with the help of his mother deceives his aging father, receives the inheritance and the blessing that was supposed to go to his brother Esau and now things go from bad to even worse in this dysfunctional family.

Esau vows to kill his own brother and so the deceiver now must flee and so now with no family, no inheritance, it doesn’t look like a blessing. Jacob runs away to his uncle’s house, to his uncle Laban and this is where we find our text today. Jacob flees to his mother’s side of the family and his uncle Laban allows him to help with the shepherding business and during the course of working with Jacob Laban quickly realizes that Jacob is quite gifted at managerial skills, but not only is Jacob quite skilled at shepherding, we learn very quickly in this narrative that he is overcome, overcome with desire and desperate for love and acceptance, how do I say that? Let’s take a look at Jacob’s desperation and his misplaced love.

Starting in verse 15, Laban begins his negotiations, right? He knows he can make a lot of money with Jacobs so he asked what do you think you deserve? Jacob says simply yet pointedly just one word if you think about it, he says give me Rachel, three words, right? Rachel, that’s all I want, Rachel. In fact, I’ll work for you seven years if you let me marry your second daughter. And then in verses 16 to 18, it starts to describe this desperation and desire. One of the first things we learned however, is that Rachel is beautiful in form and appearance and in Hebrew, the word translated form is exactly what you think it means. She had a beautiful figure, and so she had a beautiful face, a perfect figure and so it’s not strange for a young man like Jacob to find Rachel attractive.

But what we may miss here in our English translation is this almost intense over the top kind of desire and desperation of Jacob that’s being described by our narrator. In fact, one commentator notes various signals in our text that shows how desperate Jacob really is take. Take for example in verse 20, when we read of Jacob servant of seven years to describe his intense, longing and desperation for Rachel, it’s a lot more here than meets the eye, think about it. First of all, I’m sure for you, seven years to work, to marry this woman or get to marry this man’s daughter. Now, going to leave you some background here, some cultural background.

Now at this time, it wasn’t strange for a young man to pay what’s called a bride price, a bride price in order to pay the father to receive this daughter in marriage. And one of the duties of a would be husband would have to pay the bride price of about 30 to 45 shekels. And since most of us don’t know what a shekel is worth, let me give you some perspective. So again, to be able to pay the bride price, about 30 to 45 shekels. Now an average worker would earn about one or one and a half shekels per month, okay? Now you’re quickly doing the math, right? One to one and a half shekels per month an average worker would make. Now, let’s say Jacob was above average worker and he got one and a half shekels per month. How many years would he need to work to pay the bride price, two, maybe at most three years and he would be able to earn Rachel or Leah, whatever the daughter may be, to be his bride.

Now, Jacob with his superb negotiating skills says, let me give you seven. So that ought to shock you a little bit at least, why in the world would he ask for seven? Why would he negotiate 126 shekels. Jacob is willing to pay three to four times more than the average bride price, that’s how desperate he is for Rachel. Why? Let me give you some more clues. There’s actually even a more graphic example of Jacob’s intensity of this desperation. In verse 21, Jacob states bluntly and not PG language, give me my wife that I may go into her for my time is completed. Commentators here note that the language is not ordinary, in fact in the Hebrew it is so graphic, so blunt and frankly so inappropriate that Jewish commentators over the centuries have had to do a lot of language gymnastics to try to explain it, let alone translate it into English.

What is the narrator trying to convey? What is he teaching us? You see, Jacob is a man driven by one thing and one thing only, his desire and desperation for Rachel. He has an intense longing that is physical as well as deeply emotional. Why is the narrator telling us about his willingness to do seven years and the description of his intense desire, simply this friends, Jacob was empty. Jacob was someone who was intensely empty, looking for love, longing to fill the emptiness and the void in his life, any kind of love whether it be physical or emotional, think about it. Remember the story up to this point of Jacob, Jacob never experienced his father’s love. His father always favored his older brother Esau, week after week, year after year, he grows up never experiencing the love and acceptance of a father, but there’s more, he didn’t have his brother’s love, his only brother.

His brother hated him so much that he wanted to kill him. The threat was so serious he had to actually run away becoming homeless and even more empty. He did have one love, right? The love of his mother, but even that was gone. And so here is Jacob with nothing, no family, no inheritance, no blessing and no love. And in a culture where one’s identity, value and worth are so closely tied to family, he had nothing, he was nothing. And so in his desperation, what does he do? He grasps, and just like he grasped at his brother’s heel at birth, and just like he grasped at his brother’s inheritance later in life, Jacob is again grasping. He’s grasping for anything to give a meaning and purpose in this screwed up life. He’s grasping at straws to try to save himself from drowning.

And so when he comes face to face with beautiful Rachel, he probably said to himself now, my life is so messed up, at least if I can have the most beautiful woman in this town, maybe my life would mean something. If she would be my wife, then I would finally be somebody, what is he saying? Jacob is desperately trying to convince himself that what his broken and hollow heart truly needed to be finally secure and happy was Rachel. You see what’s happening? Jacob’s intense desire and desperation was coming from a deep heart cry, there was a huge hole in his heart that needed filling and so friends, I don’t know if that resonates with you, but it’s easy to believe, isn’t it?

Sometimes the lies that we hear in our own hearts and the lies that we hear from the world that anything other than God would fix my brokenness and fill my emptiness. Jacob desperately grasped for Rachel thinking she would somehow save him. You see friends, the narrator is revealing the harsh but true reality that outside of God nothing in the world can truly satisfy the deepest longings that we were created for, the deepest longings of security, significance and salvation. Jacob, unfortunately thought he can find it in Rachel and so he listened to the lie, the lie that silently whispers, if I can just have blank, then I will be happy. If I get blank, then my pain will disappear. If I can just do blank, then all my emptiness would be filled. Have you ever heard that lie?

Jacob was looking for love, looking for hope in all the wrong places, his brokenness and fear led to desire and desperation which led to misplace, grasping. And so friends in the heat of the moment, how did he respond? He responded by grasping at the one thing that he thought would give him happiness and security and see friends, this is like the difference between a thermostat and a thermometer, right? Think about it. When the heat rises, what does the thermometer do? It also rises, right? But when a thermostat in your house begins to rise, what does it do? It recognizes the heat, turns on the air conditioning and brings the temperature back down and makes it steady, right?

And see in this case, Jacob acted like a thermometer, in the heat of the moment he didn’t respond rightly, are we any different from this so-called patriarch of faith? What is our first response to the heat of life, of the challenges of life? We may call it something else but how many of us have ever struggled with feeling lonely and insignificant, wanting desperate to be loved and accepted? How many of us have tried to fix our brokenness and fill our emptiness by grasping at all the wrong things in our life, even good things. Where do you find meaning and purpose in your life even today as you sit here? Do we find it in our spouse, our children, our careers, our bank account, our retirement plan? Now don’t get me wrong, these are good things, but they are never the ultimate thing.

Have you ever asked yourself If I can just have this, then my life would be complete. If I can just get this, if I can just do this and even turned it into a prayer, Lord, if I can just have this, if I can just have her, if I can just get this. Have you ever experienced a brokenness and fear that led you down a path of looking for love in all the wrong places? And this is what Jacob did and in his desperation it only led to devastation, think about it. He puts all of his eggs into one basket, right? Seven years. And now Jacob the deceiver, right? The one who deceived his father and his brother is the one now being deceived. Remember what… Listen to what Laban says. When Laban is negotiating with Jacob, Laban never says after Jacob says I’ll serve you for seven years, he doesn’t say done, you got a deal.

He says it is better that I give her to you than I should give her to another man. So yeah, it’s better, you’re right. Eventually I’ll give her to you, that’s a good idea. All right, work for me. But he never signs a contract for seven years, Laban deceives the great deceiver. And so what happens, what goes around comes around. When time comes for Jacob to marry Rachel, we read that after the big party, Laban sends Leah instead, how messed up is that? And just like Jacob deceived his father, he has now been deceived. In fact, the Hebrew word here in verse 25 is the same word used when Jacob deceived Isaac and Esau and now he has to add seven more years, 14 years to shepherd sheep just to marry Rachel.

And this is the end result of Jacob’s desperation in his brokenness and fear, Jacob experiences heartache after heartache because of his misplaced desires and this my friends is a warning to us. This is what the narrator’s trying to say, where is your heart? What are you longing for? What are you desperate for? Will it lead to devastation? So that’s all we learn from Jacob, Jacob’s desperation, what can we learn from Leah? We’ve looked at the desperation of Jacob, now let’s take a look at the longing of Leah, Leah’s longing and loss. Who is she? What do we know about her? Well, the story doesn’t tell us much, but this we do know, right?

First, she’s the older daughter and in verse 17 we read that her eyes were weak, it’s a strange translation. Well, I checked quite a few books, quite a few commentaries and there’s actually nothing conclusive as to what this Hebrew word means. It may mean that she had bad vision, that’s true, that she couldn’t see very far, maybe she was nearsighted. But actually that doesn’t seem likely perhaps, because the detail of not being able to see a long distance doesn’t quite add to the story. I think what this actually means was that she was probably cross-eyed. Whatever it means, what we’re sure about is this, compared to Rachel, Leah was probably unattractive and lived her whole life in contrast to her absolutely stunning younger sister and now that they’re both of age to get married, think, think of all the shame, the sadness that would have followed her each and every day.

She had no beauty to look at, she was never desired, she was despised and rejected, she was full of sorrow and acquainted with grief and as Tim Keller says, she was the girl nobody wanted. I remember when I was a young boy, I had just moved from Korea to the United States and I actually recall a time when I felt the pain of not being wanted. It was the first or second week of school here in America and it was PE time and for PE they decided to play a game called kickball, and as a boy from Korea that knew how to play a little bit of soccer I thought now this is where I’m going to earn a lot of friends. This is where people are going to really accept me and love me and value me because I’ll show them how to kick a true ball.

Little did I know it was one of these rubber balls that don’t go very far and so it began, right? The teacher picked two boys to be captains, they started to choose from all the kids in the class who they wanted for their team, they all started to point and choose. I pick him, I pick him and on and on. I pick him, I pick him and I don’t know about you, but when you were back in elementary school all the boys were picked first, right? Minus one, the bypass, the one last boy went to all the girls. I pick her, I pick her, oh the shame, oh the sadness. Soon all the boys were picked, all the girls were picked and guess who was left? You guessed it. The strange kid from Korea with even a stranger name, which didn’t actually sound Korean. I was the boy nobody wanted.

Now, obviously we can laugh about that, maybe you laugh more than I do, but it doesn’t take much imagination when you think about the story with Leah and you empathize with her, especially if you’ve ever felt the pain and shame of exclusion, think about it. Her whole life she had lived in the shadow of her sister and now she who nobody wanted was now being given to a man by her father, to a man that didn’t want her and probably a father that didn’t want her. Imagine the gaping hole in her heart, full of grief and sadness, how she must have desperately longed for love and acceptance. To be known, to be desired, to just feel wanted, just to feel special.

And what’s interesting at this point in the story is how utterly similar Leah is to Jacob, right? Think about it. Here are two people with the same desperate, longing for love and acceptance, trying desperately to fill the emptiness in their hearts and gain their value, their worth, their identity from anything, anything they can grasp at, except for God. And so she gets involved in her father’s deceit and she grasps hoping somehow yes, maybe if I marry Jacob I would be somebody, it’s so heartbreaking as her story goes from bad to worse, think about what happens in verses 32 and following. Again, there’s not a lot of detail, but let me try to explain to you. Leah actually gives birth to a son, a beautiful boy, which is a wonderful gift, right? In this culture, in our culture.

What a wonderful gift of having a son and she names him Ruben, remember names in the Bible are significant. You know what Reuben means? It means to see, why? Because maybe now Jacob will see me and love me. Time goes on, she gives a second son, names him Simeon, which actually has to do with hearing. Maybe now, maybe now my husband will finally listen to me and the cry of my heart, but he doesn’t, does he? A third son, naming him Levi which means to be attached. Maybe now, maybe now finally my husband will attach himself to me, maybe he will truly love me, after all, I’ve given him three beautiful sons. I’ve been faithful, I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do. See, the narrator here is describing this almost tangible and palpable loneliness and longing, the pain and the emptiness must have been unbearable for her.

What’s the point? In her desperate, longing for love, she’s grasping. She tries to fill the emptiness in her heart by having children. She’s taking something so beautiful, namely having children and turned it into a tool to capture the love that she so long for. She so long for her husband’s love and acceptance that she placed all of her hope, all of her security in her sons. If I give my husband beautiful sons, surely he will love me and life will finally be okay. Surely that will make all the pain go away and my heart will be at peace. Yet we read simply, yet painfully in verse 30, Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah. Still despised, still rejected, still empty and so friends it doesn’t take much to imagine the unimaginable heartache and that Leah must have felt every single day of her life even after bearing her husband three sons, this is Leah’s longing.

This is her life, a life that’s been filled with loneliness and longing, shame and sadness. And her longing is not very different than Jacob’s desperation, is it? And just like him, she’s looking for love in all the wrong places. But it’s understandable, isn’t it? Because just like Jacob and Leah, what do we do when we’re trying to fill the emptiness and the brokenness of our own lives? When things don’t go according to plan, whether you’re in high school trying to make new friends, when you’re trying to find your spouse, trying to have a child, trying to go to church and sit inside, not under some shade outside, or just try to have a normal life and all seems to go wrong.

And all the brokenness around us in our world and in our hearts, how do we respond to this? Where are you seeking? Where are you grasping? Where are you looking? And as you experience the fears and loneliness that often accompanies much of this pandemic life, where are you looking for security and fulfillment for peace, for hope, for confidence, for courage. What are you grasping at? You see friends, as this story teaches us, an idol is whatever you look to and say in your heart of hearts, if I have that, if I do that, then I feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, I’ll feel significant and I’ll feel secure. And the idols of our hearts can be good things, even like spouses, careers, children, a church, wearing a mask, not wearing a mask.

And that’s often what the stories of the patriarchs are all about, messed up people like you and me who don’t seek the grace that we need and who don’t deserve the grace that we get friends. Whether we’re like Jacob desperately running after things that will never satisfy or like Leah desperately longing for approval, acceptance, nothing in this world, even good things will fill the gaping hole in our hearts that only can be filled by God and his grace ultimately found in the gospel. Friends, this is the hope and peace, not only available for Jacob and Leah but also for you and for me. And so we turn to the last character in our story and we discover God’s gracious provision of hope and peace. We’ve looked at the desperation of Jacob, the longing of Leah, now let’s look at the hope of Judah.

Did you notice that after Leah has her first son, how the language changes, but not only just the language, but the heart cry. She says… it says in verse 35, very simply yet poignantly. She conceived again and bore a son and said this time I will praise the Lord, therefore she called his name Judah, which means to praise, then she ceased bearing. Friends, did you hear that? Now I will praise the Lord. At first glance this verse doesn’t seem like much, but look again, in comparison to the first three sons where you heard Leah’s desperate longing in the names that she gave them, right? Ruben, maybe she will see me, Simeon, maybe he will hear me, Levi, maybe he will be attached to me, all boiling down to maybe just maybe he will love me.

But with the birth of her fourth son, there is no mention of husband, there is no mention of child. She simply says now I will praise the Lord, period. Friends, there’s been a breakthrough and though the text is sparse in the details, something has changed in her heart. That has changed the way she thinks about her life, the way she thinks about the God of grace and she’s given her heart now, not to Jacob, not even to her children, those are good things, she’s given her heart to the God of grace, the only one that can satisfy her deepest longings and to save her from her emptiness. What happened? Think about it, who was Judah? As you know in the story of Genesis as the story progresses, it is actually through Judah the Messiah King will come. The King will come through the girl nobody wanted.

Leah, the unloved, the unaccepted, will be the mother of the Messiah. You see, Judah represents God’s passionate and relentless pursuit of messed up people with messed up priorities like Jacob and Leah and like you and me, ordinary people like you and me who often don’t seek the grace that we need and don’t deserve the grace that we get. In verse 31, it tells us that when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb. God gave to her the gift of life and she finally realized the gift of the God of life. God saw, God heard, God attached himself to her, God loved the unattractive, the unwanted. God became the husband that Leah so desperately wanted and needed.

Friends, but God did more, right? Think about it. God became the one no one wanted for you and for me. You see, the Bible tells the amazing story of God, the creating a universe, that he became like us, entered into our world yet without sin so that he can… we can get the grace that we so desperately need, the grace of becoming united to him by faith but this wasn’t easy for Judah’s descendant, the Messiah King, think about it. This King, the King of all Kings had no form or majesty that we should look on him, he had no beauty that we should desire him. This King was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. This King was one who men hide their faces, this King came to his own, but his own did not receive him, his own disciples abandoned him. Even his own father turned his back on him as he hung on the cross. This King cried out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He became the one nobody wanted on the cross and he became like Leah, but he was also unlike Jacob, wasn’t he? Unlike Jacob, this King did not grasp. Remember what Philippians 2:6 six tells us, Jacob though he was God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped but he emptied himself becoming a man and becoming obedient to the point of sacrificial and substitutionary death on a cross. Friends, Judas descendant, Jesus Christ did this for you, for me, indeed for all the Jacobs, for all the Leah’s who need grace. A divine grace and love that fixes your brokenness with his shed blood and fills your emptiness with his earned righteousness. Friends, he bore your griefs and carried your sorrows.

He was stricken smitten and afflicted, he was pierced for your transgressions and crushed for your inequities and upon him was the chastisement that brings us peace and by his wounds he has healed you once and for all, for the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. So friends, what this means is you don’t need to grasp anymore because you have everything. The King of Kings has given you everything and when you have everything, you don’t need anything. And when God the King gives you things, you receive it with thanks giving and you steward it with praise. So God is calling us to remember what Judah’s greater son Jesus has given for us and so no matter how messed up our hearts and our lives and our world may be, God has come in the person and work of Jesus to love you, to accept you and to fill you with his spirit, you desperately sinful people who in spite of our sin and shame, desperation and grasping at all the wrong things, he wants to remind you that he loves you.

He sees you, he hears you and he has ultimately and infinitely attached himself to you. So no matter what happens in this crazy world, no matter what happens in your fickle hearts, friends, we can say with deep confidence and hope, now I will praise the Lord, amen. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this amazing reality that you see us, you hear us, you’ve attached yourself to us, you’ve loved us, ultimately in the person and work of your son. And we realize we have hope, peace and the love of Judah’s greater son Jesus. We’re no longer consumed by the difficulties and challenges of this life and the difficulty and challenges, the trials and tribulations of even our own fickle hearts.

And so Lord help us to be consumed by the gospel of grace and love and as we remember what you have done for us on the cross and in your perfect life, may that just take away everything in our hearts that’s keeping us from seeing you, hearing you and attaching ourselves to you, is as we’re consumed by your love, we want to love you and others with an unfettered and bold, courageous and confidence faith. But Lord, we realize that our faith is weak, so Lord would you continue to help us by your spirit to realize that we are fully known and fully loved and when we realize that Lord, it changes everything. And as you fix our brokenness and fill our emptiness, as you satisfy our deepest desires of our hearts, may we flee to you, rest in you, trust in you, rely on you and may we remember that you are all we ever need both now and forevermore. For we pray this in the name of Jesus, amen.