Read Gen 31:22-55
On the third day after Jacob had left, Laban noticed he was gone. (On the third day after Jesus had left, Mary noticed he was gone!) Laban took his men and went after Jacob. He found him after 7 days of traveling and would have been violent had not God warned him in a dream not to harm him. When he caught up with him he asked Jacob why he fled without telling him. Laban tried to make him feel guilty with sentimental malarky when really he was mad that his household gods were stolen. Jacob explained that he fled secretly for fear Laban would take his daughters back. As far as the stolen gods… he was welcome to search and kill the person who stole them. He didn’t know that Rachel had taken them. She hid them in the saddle of her camel and sat on top of it. They started searching all the tents and when they came to Rachel’s she told her father that she couldn’t get up because she was in her period and he believed her. When they couldn’t find the teriphim, Jacob rebuked Laban for even thinking he would steal from him after the loyalty he had shown him all these years. Jacob had served Laban 14 years for his daughters and 6 for his cattle having his wages changed 10 times. So, they decided to make a covenant of peace between them. This would mark the boundary line that they would not pass it to harm the other. They had a meal together and Laban went back home the next day.
Jacob came to Laban 20 years earlier as a conniving manipulator but God wanted to make Jacob a patriarch so he sent him to serve a man who was an even greater con man than himself. In the 20 years that Jacob served Laban, God worked all of that characteristic out of him. God knows just what we need to conform us into his image.
Lord, thank you for the trials that you bring into our lives to work an even greater work in us.
No comments:
Post a Comment