Tasting Your Own Medicine

[0:00] As he looked, he saw a whale in the field, and behold, three frogs of sheep laying beside it, for out of the whale the frogs were watered.

[0:14] ! The stone on the whale's mouth was large, and then all the frogs were gathered there, and the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the whale and water the sheep and put the sheep on the sheep.

[0:30] The stone barked in its place over the mouth of the whale. Jacob said to them, My brothers, where do you come from? They said, We are from Halan.

[0:42] He said to them, Do you know Reban, the son of Nahor? They said, We know him. He said to them, Is it where with him? They said, It is where? And see, Rachel, his daughter, is coming with the sheep.

[0:59] He said, Behold, it is still high day. It is not time for the livestock to be gathered together. Water the sheep and go pasture them.

[1:11] But they said, We cannot until all the frogs are gathered together, and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the whale. Then we water the sheep.

[1:23] While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she was a shepherdess.

[1:34] Now, as soon as Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Reban, his mother's brother, and the sheep of Reban, his mother's brother, Jacob came near and rolled the stone from the whale's mouth and watered the flock of Reban, his mother's brother.

[1:54] Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's kinsman and that he was Rebekah's son, and she ran and told her father.

[2:09] As soon as Reban heard the news about Jacob, his sister's son, he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house.

[2:21] Jacob told Reban all of these things. And Reban said to him, Surely you are my bone and my flesh. And he stayed with him a month.

[2:33] Then Reban said to Jacob, Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wage be?

[2:47] Now Reban had two daughters. Reban said to him, I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel.

[3:11] Reban said, It is better that I give her to you than I should give her to any other man. Stay with me.

[3:21] So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.

[3:32] Then Jacob said to Reban, Give me my wife that I may go in to her for my time is completed. Reban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast.

[3:47] Reban gave her to her daughter, Rachel. But in the evening he took his daughter, Ria, and brought her to Jacob and he went in to her. Reban gave his female servant, Zerpah, to his daughter, Ria to be her servant.

[4:02] And in the morning, behold, it was Ria. And Jacob said to Reban, What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel?

[4:15] Why then have you deceived me? Reban 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 also in return for serving me another seven years.

[4:35] Jacob did so and completed her week. Then Reban gave him his daughter, Rachel, to be his wife. Reban gave his female servant, Birha, to his daughter, Rachel, to be her servant.

[4:49] So Jacob went in to Rachel also and he loved Rachel more than Ria and served Reban for another seven years.

[5:02] What goes through your mind when you read or hear a passage like this read? In this account we have a chance meeting between two persons who will be husband and wife.

[5:22] Beauty comparison between two sisters, romantic love and marriage. Betrayal and deception. And tensions between an uncle and a nephew and then even between two sisters.

[5:41] It has all the elements of a blockbuster movie or a great best-selling novel. And if we aren't careful, we can actually take in this content in a very similar way.

[5:57] In a kind of entertaining, interesting way. But brothers and sisters, what we are reading in this passage, what we're reading as we work through Genesis, it's more than just interesting content.

[6:11] This is God's Word. And this is God's Holy Word that He has preserved for us over the ages and He has a purpose for it. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, as he was concluding it, here's what he writes about Old Testament Scripture.

[6:32] He says, For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.

[6:44] The point is that the ancient texts of God's Word have an important relevance to our modern lives.

[6:58] God's plan is that these ancient texts would help us to endure, they would help us to be encouraged, and that they would give us hope as we journey through this life.

[7:09] And not just a humanistic hope, not just a hope that is soon to be dashed, but gospel hope, enduring hope, hope that is fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ, that no matter what we endure in this life, we have a hope that is in Christ, that is secure, that nothing can change, that nothing will separate us from.

[7:36] And that is the effect that God desires, that his Word should have on our lives, and I pray this morning that that will be the effect of this passage on our lives.

[7:49] But first, let's pray before we consider it more closely. Father, would you draw near to us in this moment of hearing your Word preached?

[8:03] Lord, you know where each one of us is, and what each one of us needs. And we pray that you would help us to hear and to embrace your Word and to be transformed by your Word.

[8:18] Lord, we pray that your Word will grant to us the strength that we need to endure, that it would give us encouragement where we may be discouraged.

[8:29] And Lord, I pray that it gives us gospel hope. I pray that it gives us hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, that no matter what we face today or in the days ahead, we can be rooted and grounded in the fact that our faith is in the unchanging Lord of the universe.

[8:50] So God, would you work in our midst and in our hearts in these moments. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Genesis 29 marks yet another section or transition in the book of Genesis.

[9:10] If you think of it as scenes, it's kind of like now we have a scene with Jacob all by himself. He's the main character. He's left behind Isaac and Rebekah and Esau.

[9:24] And we'll only catch up with Isaac and Esau a little later, but not for several chapters. The focus is on Jacob. He is the one that the Lord determined will be the heir of the blessings of Abraham.

[9:44] They will continue through him. He is the one through whom the 12 tribes of Israel would come. And we'll see that he is the one whose name God will change in a couple of chapters.

[9:57] And to appreciate the change that happens in this man, we really need to take in the content that we are being exposed to right now. We won't appreciate the man that Jacob becomes unless we appreciate the man that Jacob is.

[10:12] And what we see in these two chapters, chapters 29 and 30, we're taking them in sections because they're long, but they're all really together, and they represent 20 years of his life.

[10:28] They represent a period of time when he goes to live with his uncle, Laban, in Haran. And this morning we are covering the introduction to those years.

[10:43] And I want to consider this passage before us under two headings. And the first is God's appointment. In verse 1 we are told that Jacob went on his journey.

[10:57] He came to the land of the people of the east. Now I think it's important for us to look at those words and remember something.

[11:08] This is not just Jacob's journey. This is also God's journey. The Lord promised Jacob in the earlier verses that we looked at last week.

[11:19] He said, wherever you go, I'm going to be with you. I will never leave you until I have performed all that I have promised. So God is taking him on this journey.

[11:32] And it's important to remember the promises that God gave to him because he's going to experience some hardships that don't look anything like those promises.

[11:45] But God is at work in those hardships. As a matter of fact, God is over those hardships. Do you remember the vision he had? There's this ladder from earth to heaven and above the ladder was God himself.

[11:59] And God is the one who is superintending and over all the hardships that Jacob is going to experience in this 20-year span of his life that we're going to cover in chapters 29 and 30 over some two weeks.

[12:19] So what we see is he arrives in this land. He doesn't know where he is. And the narrator wants us to see he doesn't know where he is.

[12:31] He simply arrives in the land of the people to the east. Verse 4 helps us to see that he doesn't know where he is. He asks the men of the town, shepherds who were gathered at the well, where are you from?

[12:45] And when they told him they were from Haran, he said, well, do you know Laban? And they said to him, yes, we know Laban.

[12:57] And they pointed to Rachel, who at that moment was coming towards the well. Look at verse 9. Verse 9 says, Now some of you are thinking, deja vu.

[13:20] We've encountered this before, and we have. We've encountered something very similar to this in chapter 29. In chapter 24, sorry. when Abraham was near death, and he told his servant, I want you to go to my homeland, and I want you to find a wife for my son Isaac.

[13:43] And the servant went. And the servant went to a well, and while he was at the well, as soon as he got to the well, Rebecca came approaching the well, and she was the one who became Isaac's wife.

[14:02] But although these two accounts are similar, they're very different, and they're very different in an important way. They're similar, because what we see in both is the providence of God was at work.

[14:17] The providence of God was at work so that in each case, as each of these men went to the well, the woman who was going to be the wife that each of them was looking for happened to be approaching the well right at the same time.

[14:32] That is the providence of the Lord. What are the chances of that being a random event? That each of these women would approach the well when each of these men would be there.

[14:47] And in the case of Abraham's servant looking for a wife for Isaac, and the case of Jacob looking for a wife for himself. And another thing is that it probably was the same well.

[15:03] Same town, same family, same people, probably the same well that they were going to. Because wells were not that much in abundance in those days. And removed by many, many years.

[15:17] But there's a sovereign God working in both. And God is orchestrating it in such a way to bring it to our attention to say, this is not chance. This is providence.

[15:28] So the providence of God was at work in both situations. But there's an important difference. The difference between these two events is that in the case of Jacob's, in the case of Abraham's servant when he ran to the well, well, let me back up and make another point before I make that point.

[16:06] We're told that both of them, as they were speaking, in the case of Abraham's servant, he was praying to God. He was crying out to God. He was saying, God, I need you to show me, help me to find this woman.

[16:20] He was skeptical that he was going to find a wife for Isaac. And he cried out to God and prayed. And sure enough, we read in Genesis 24, 15, as he had finished speaking, he was speaking to God, Behold, Rebekah, who was born in Bethuel, born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abram's brother, came out with a water jar on her shoulder.

[16:47] So as he's praying to God, as soon as he's finished, Rebekah appears. In Jacob's case, we're told in verse 9, if you want to look there briefly, in Jacob's case, we're told in verse 9, while he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she was a shepherdess.

[17:16] So we have two similar situations. In the case of the servant of Abraham, he is talking to God. In the case of Jacob, he is talking to these men. And that's when the bride-to-be in each case appears.

[17:33] And what I want us to see with this is, the difference between Jacob and his approach to this important moment in his life, and Abraham's servant, under Abraham's instruction, concerning the important moment in Isaac's life, as he was trying to get this wife for Isaac.

[17:56] Jacob shows no dependence on God. And this gives us a window into the man who Jacob was. He just had this encounter with God.

[18:09] He made God all these promises, and now he's embarking on this journey, and God is absent from it. Not praying to God like this servant was doing. He is leaning to his own understanding.

[18:22] He is depending on his own abilities. He goes up and takes the stone away from the mouth of the well. And he offers no praise to God when he encounters Rachel.

[18:38] I mean, what are the chances of him wandering to the people of the East and happens to come upon the very family that he is intended to go to?

[18:51] But this is indicative of Jacob's life for 20 years. When you read Genesis 29 and 30, there is no reference to God in Jacob's life.

[19:01] The nearest reference that we find in Jacob's life to God in this encounter, his time in Haran was when Rachel came to him complaining that she couldn't have children.

[19:16] And he said, Am I in the place of God? It's in Genesis 30, and I think verse 2 or 3. Am I in the place of God who has withheld you from having children?

[19:27] Other than that, God is absent in the life of Jacob. Notice, in verse 13, we're told that when Laban came to meet Jacob, that Jacob told him all of these things.

[19:53] Just look at that with me. Genesis 29, starting in verse 13. As soon as Laban heard the news about Jacob, his sister's son, he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to the house.

[20:12] Jacob told Laban all these things, and Laban said to him, Surely, you are my bone and you are my flesh.

[20:22] And he stayed with him a month. Not only was there a divine appointment with Jacob meeting Rachel, but there's also a divine appointment with Jacob meeting Laban, his future father-in-law, who's also his uncle.

[20:40] God providentially planned both. And so Jacob talks to Laban. He tells him all these things, and we can suppose all these things includes why he came to Haran, that he is there under the instructions of his father and his mother, and he came to look for a wife.

[21:01] I doubt he told him how he deceived his father and how he defrauded his brother. But I think it's fair to say that he at least told him, The reason I'm here is, I'm looking to marry one of your daughters.

[21:18] I'm looking for a wife. But while Laban seems very excited to have his nephew to visit, and he stays with him in a month's time, his true colors actually come out.

[21:35] Even though he knew that his nephew would come to Haran in search of a wife, Laban saw Jacob not as a nephew, but as a future hired hand whom he could take advantage of.

[21:49] After all, Jacob came with virtually nothing. He had great promises, but in terms of possessions, he had absolutely nothing. And we see in verse 15 that Laban says to Jacob, Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing?

[22:13] Tell me, what will your wages be? Now this may seem noble on the face of it, but really this showed that Laban had ulterior motives.

[22:23] He was not treating Jacob as family. He was treating him as a stranger. He was treating him as someone with whom he was going to have an economic relationship. What he was doing really was unthinkable.

[22:39] He was asking Jacob, how much per day do you want to work for me for? As his uncle, Laban should have done whatever he could to help Jacob to become established in life, and that would have included marriage.

[22:58] But Laban wanted an economic arrangement, and he wanted to advance his own interests over Jacob's. He was indifferent to the fact that Jacob was family, and he treated him like a stranger.

[23:12] Rather than welcoming him in and letting him serve him the same way that his other family members were serving him and helping him with marriage, he doesn't do that. And so what is Jacob's response?

[23:25] Look at Jacob's response in verse 18. We read, Jacob loved Rachel, and he said, I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel.

[23:40] And Laban accepts. And he accepts in a very tricky kind of way by saying it's better that I give her to you than I give her to any other man.

[23:52] Stay with me. And even at this point, it's very clear that Laban had no intention of honoring that agreement that he was entering into with his nephew.

[24:06] And so essentially, Jacob was going to work under contract for seven years. He was going to receive no daily wage. And you can see how egregious this was, what Laban did to his nephew.

[24:20] He wasn't going to get any tangible money in his hands. He was going to work for seven years, kind of crediting him for seven years. And then at the end of seven years, he gets paid with his daughter.

[24:33] And so Laban gets the benefit of labor, and he actually gives nothing in return because he was going to give his daughter, who was already in existence.

[24:45] And it doesn't cost him in an economic sense. And so Laban treats his nephew as a total stranger, and he takes advantage of him in this circumstance.

[25:01] Now, as you read this, does any of it sound familiar? What should sound familiar is that Jacob treated his brother Esau in a very similar manner?

[25:17] Esau was, at one point in his life, at a very weak moment. He had come in from hunting. He was famished. He was tired.

[25:28] And he asked Jacob, give me a bowl of soup. Not give me all of your soup, just give me a bowl of it. And Jacob took advantage of that moment, and he didn't see his brother as a brother.

[25:40] He saw his brother as an opportunity just to advance himself. And that's what the birthright was about. The birthright was about things. It was about getting a double portion of what his father would leave.

[25:52] And Jacob reduced his relationship with his brother to an economic arrangement, and he took advantage of him in a moment of weakness, in a moment of vulnerability.

[26:04] And what we see is he now finds himself in a place of weakness, in a place of vulnerability, and his uncle is going to treat him in a most heartless and ruthless and crooked manner.

[26:23] And he is going to experience at the hands of his uncle the same kind of treatment that he gave his own brother. What Jacob was experiencing in this first instance was a taste of his own medicine.

[26:43] He was being heartlessly treated by someone who should not treat him that way. But this just wasn't what Laban was doing to Jacob.

[26:55] This was what God was doing to Jacob. But God was not simply punishing Jacob. He wasn't simply venting on him in that moment.

[27:07] No, what God was doing was God was teaching Jacob so he could transform Jacob into the man that he wanted him to be. And part of that transformation included allowing Jacob to feel the same kind of pain that he had put his brother through by mistreating him and not treating him as a brother, as family, as he should.

[27:33] I'm sure most of us this morning have lived long enough to experience what Jacob was experiencing tasting his own medicine.

[27:45] I'm sure we've all experienced the dealings of God where he's helped us in retrospect to see a situation the way we should have seen it when we did it to someone else.

[28:01] And God in his providence does it in our lives to help us to repent and to reform just as he was doing in the life of Jacob.

[28:11] And he was doing it for good. He was doing it for our good. He did it for Jacob's good. As I was thinking about this my mind flashed back to my childhood and I remembered a commercial that used to come on the radio for Buckley's Mixture.

[28:30] And I know many of you would remember that. And there's this guy with this cracky voice and he says Buckley's Mixture tastes awful but it works. And that's where God's dealings with us is.

[28:45] When he makes us taste a taste of our own medicine it helps us. It helps us to see things in retrospect that we did not see in the moment.

[28:59] And if we are wise brothers and sisters we would embrace it because we recognize that ultimately it is a sovereign God who is causing us to taste our own medicine.

[29:13] So Jacob's journey to Haran was God's appointment. But a mere seven years into the 20 years that he would spend there Jacob met with a disappointment.

[29:27] And that's my second and final point Jacob's disappointment. After Jacob had worked for Laban for seven years in return for Rachel to become his wife you would think that Laban would be the one who was running to Jacob and say hey the seven years are up here is your wife.

[29:48] But that doesn't happen. Notice what happens in verse 20. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.

[30:03] And Jacob said to Laban give me my wife that I may go into her for my time is completed. Jacob was the one who went to go to Laban and we could see with the very abrupt words that he uses to his uncle and his father-in-law that there was bad blood between them.

[30:21] Things were disintegrating between them. Their relationship was strained. Their relationship was already beginning to be difficult. And so what does Laban do? He throws a big feast, a wedding feast, invites all the friends and lots of food and no doubt a lot of alcohol as well.

[30:40] But that evening rather than give Jacob Rachel, what Laban does is he gives Jacob Leah. Under the cloak of darkness he gives Leah to Jacob rather than his daughter Rachel.

[31:04] No doubt it was customary that the bride would have been veiled so that also was an element of surprise for him. And it is quite obvious that for Jacob to have slept with Leah and not know that he was not sleeping with Rachel that he also had a good bit to drink and I believe that his father-in-law saw to that that he had a lot to drink.

[31:32] But the next morning after the darkness had given to the light and the veil was off and the alcohol had probably also worn off, the truth came out. And what came out was that his crooked father-in-law had deceived him and given him Leah instead of Rachel for his wife.

[31:52] I was thinking, imagine that if somebody was writing that in Bahamian culture. Just imagine what the scene would have been that next morning in a neighborhood where the houses are close and you could hear all that's going on.

[32:08] Jacob was fuming. Leah felt rejected. And no doubt Rachel was disappointed and Laban, well perhaps Laban was smiling.

[32:21] Even if not outwardly he was smiling inwardly that he was able to do this because he deceived Jacob for seven years. He never had any intention of giving him Rachel.

[32:34] And so for seven years he kept that as a secret that at the end of the seven years he's going to give him Rachel and he was deceiving Jacob the whole time. Jacob had no sense of it.

[32:48] And we see how Jacob confronts him in verse 25. Look at verse 25. It says in the morning behold it was Leah and Jacob said to Laban three questions.

[33:01] What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me? And Laban was heartless and cold in his response and simply says to him it isn't done that way in our country.

[33:21] We don't give the younger to be married before the firstborn. And he takes no responsibility for what he did. He takes no responsibility for the fact that he deceived Jacob every step of the way.

[33:36] He could have maybe in the middle of the 70s say you know by the way this is our culture I'm going to have to give you Leah first and then you can get Rachel afterwards.

[33:47] But none of that. He was heartless and he knew that Jacob was working for Leah when in his mind, Jacob's mind, he was working for Rachel.

[34:01] But again, let's not miss what's happening. What's happening here is once again God is causing Jacob to taste his own medicine.

[34:16] Jacob used Isaac's blindness to deceive him and Laban used the night's darkness to deceive Jacob. And so what happened?

[34:30] The deceiver was deceived. What happened? The deceiver who had only gone to grade school deceit is now getting a postgraduate degree in deception from his uncle.

[34:45] The one who was the fountainhead, like his mother, who also was able to engage in trickery and deceit. He's now learning from the first generation of those who were deceptive.

[35:01] Jacob was experiencing deception at the hands of somebody trusted just as he himself had deceived his father who trusted him.

[35:11] And so Laban tells him, look, let's not make a scene of this. Go ahead and finish the bridal week, this week of celebration, seven days of feasting.

[35:24] Finish that and then I'm going to give you Rachel. In other words, you're getting another marriage, but you've got to work seven years for that. Imagine the pain that Jacob would have felt.

[35:36] You know, we read that the seven years felt like a few days. When you realize now that you really were not working for Rachel, you were working for Leah, that wasn't just a few days.

[35:48] That was hard labor because you're working for a woman that you really didn't love. But he was at Laban's mercy. He had nothing. He'd spent seven years in Haran slaving in the heat of the day and all he had to show for it was a wife whom he didn't love.

[36:10] And so he had to take the proposal that was given to him and obviously he loved Rachel and so he went along with that as well. We're not told what was going through Jacob's mind as he experienced this.

[36:29] We don't know for sure if Jacob at this time was aware that he was drinking his own medicine. we can tell later on that he became a transformed man but we don't know what was going on in his mind at that point.

[36:45] Perhaps he was too engulfed in anger towards Laban and still too wrapped up in love for Rachel to even give thought to what was going on in his own heart and how he deceived his father and how he defrauded his brother.

[37:02] He probably wasn't connecting the dots. Not yet. And what we see is this helps us see how patient God was with Jacob. God was patient with Jacob.

[37:14] And it should encourage us brothers and sisters. He's patient with us as well. Sometimes we don't get it. Sometimes God causes us to taste our own medicine and we're not grasping it and we need more time of getting more tastes of that medicine before we are transformed and before we are changed.

[37:33] But the good news is God is patient. He's patient with us just as he was patient with Jacob. And what we see is at the end of this account, in the end, God uses all these circumstances.

[37:50] God uses Leah in a powerful way in Jacob's life. And we'll see that as we work our way through. And although this was this deception that his uncle did, although this was something he didn't want, God was at work in it as well, bringing his purposes to pass.

[38:10] He worked in both of these wives' lives who were given to him. But we see in this appointment that he had in Haran, and this disappointment that he experienced, God was at work in breaking Jacob and building him into the man that he wanted him to be, and he was disciplining him.

[38:40] But God wasn't giving Jacob what Jacob deserved. God was not treating Jacob with the kind of severity and discipline that his sins of defrauding his brother and deceiving his father deserved.

[38:55] Do you know under the Old Covenant what the punishment was for being disrespectful to a parent? He was stoned. And in the Old Testament, one of the ways we learn about how God views a particular sin is the punishment he attaches to it.

[39:16] And when you study the Old Testament, you'll see in some cases, some sins, you brought a pigeon, or you brought a goat, or you brought a bull. And then there were some sins that were capital sins.

[39:29] And a capital sin was to, it was a capital sin to disrespect your parent. And what Jacob did to his father, Isaac, was beyond disrespect.

[39:44] The calculated deception was beyond respect. And so when we consider how God is dealing with him, God did not deal with him the way his sins deserve.

[39:57] And this is not the time of the law being given yet. We see that eventually, but this is the same God who gives that law. And this is the same God who would feel the same way about Jacob's disrespect and deceit of his father.

[40:16] I'm reminded of Psalm 103, verses 8 to 10. These are verses I come back too often. The Lord is merciful and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

[40:30] He will not always chide, Brother David prayed that this morning, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.

[40:47] Brothers and sisters, God doesn't deal with us according to our sins. If God dealt with us according to our sins, he would crush us.

[40:59] And we know that because that's the way he dealt with his son who bore our sins. He crushed him because that was the just and right punishment for those sins.

[41:15] If God did to Jesus, on the cross, more than was merited, that shows a defect in the character of God.

[41:27] Brothers and sisters, what God did to Jesus was just and perfect and right. And those sins were not his sins, those sins were our sins. And the reason that God does not deal with us according to what our sins deserve is because he dealt with Christ according to what our sins deserve.

[41:47] and you realize that Christ was not just bearing my sins and your sins, he was bearing Jacob's sins as well. The reason that God was not giving Jacob the full brunt of what his sins deserve is because he was going to put it on the Lord Jesus Christ.

[42:07] And Jesus bore the sins of both Old Testament saints and New Testament saints so that God could be gracious to both. And if we want to see what our sins really deserve, let's meditate on the cross.

[42:23] Let's read the gospel accounts of the crucifixion. And we will see that is what our sins deserve. That is how hideous and serious our sins are.

[42:36] But God doesn't deal with us in that way. What he does is he gives us grace like we sang about this morning. Marvelous grace, amazing grace, undeserved grace. that's what Jacob received.

[42:48] As hard as those years were in Haran, as difficult as the deception was and the heart break was, none of that compared to the punishment that he meted out on his son for Jacob's sins and for our sins.

[43:08] And thank God that he doesn't deal with us according to what our sins deserve. And thank God that he can deal with us in a gracious way because he poured his wrath out on his son.

[43:22] And so brothers and sisters, let's take that to heart this morning and let's rejoice. Let's rejoice. We sing a song, no wrath remains for us to face.

[43:35] We're sheltered by his saving grace. No wrath remains for us to face. Those of us who have trusted in Jesus, us. We never have to fear standing before God and facing the punishment of our sins because God poured it out on Christ and if he requires it of us, he is requiring it twice.

[43:58] And he is too unjust to do that. Jesus paid it and he paid it all. And let us rejoice in that, brothers and sisters. And let that be the reason that we would seek to live for the Lord as debtors to mercy, the mercy that he has given to undeserving sinners like us.

[44:15] And if you don't know Christ this morning, I say receive this grace. Receive the pardon for your sins. Because sin is going to be punished in one of two places.

[44:27] Sin is punished on the back of Jesus for all those who believe. Or sin will be punished on the back of all those who do not put their trust in Jesus because they're essentially saying, I'll bear my own sins.

[44:40] I'll pay my own price. And so I pray today that if you don't know Jesus, that you put your trust in him and you will find pardon for your sins.

[44:52] Let's pray. Father, thank you for the mercy and grace that we can receive because you poured out your wrath on your son.

[45:05] Thank you, Lord, that even when you allow us to taste our own medicine, you don't give us the whole bottle. You don't drown us in the punishment that our sins deserve because you poured it out on your son.

[45:19] I pray, Lord, this morning that you would help us to marvel at your grace, rejoice in your grace, and then to live as debtors to the mercy that you have given to us.

[45:34] Lord, I do pray for any under the sound of my voice this morning who do not know Jesus. Grant them repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

[45:48] We ask these things in his name. Amen. Let's start for our closing song. Amen.