God's Faithfulness to Sanctify
The following is a sermon manuscript.
One thing my family enjoys doing to relax is watching YouTube videos. I don’t aimlessly browse YouTube for videos. I go to YouTube looking for something specific. However, Phill loves to scroll through YouTube and he finds the most interesting videos. One kind of videos he likes to watch is welding and blacksmithing videos. It's amazing watching a blacksmith forge a sword. I don’t know if you know, but we own a sword! We had a sword at our wedding borrowed from a Scottish tradition. I can tell you the full story later if you want, but it's a beautiful sword. Watching these videos helps me appreciate the sword that we have and all it went through to become what it is today.
They start by purifying a steel chunk, beating out impurities and oxidation with a hammer. It's heated to 3000 degrees at points and it's changed in temperature and form throughout this purification process. It's rather beautiful to watch this hot metal and see how it becomes pure. But it sure doesn't look fun for the metal! It's literally being beat into form and heated to outrageous temperatures! But doing so creates something beautiful and useful from what was once just a hunk of metal. The skilled blacksmith utilizes heat, force, and various elements to create incredible swords and items from raw materials.
Perhaps you see where I'm going with this. Many factors shape us in our lives too. The things of God remove the impurities from us, but it can be painful. The things of the world and our sin nature add impurities to us. But sometimes adding impurities in sin actually feels easier than having them removed from us as we’re purified. We're going to return to the story of Jacob. As a reminder, he was a deceiver. He cheated Esau out of something that God had already promised to Jacob. He was pursuing the plans of God, but in the sinful ways of man. Jacob is about to get a taste of his own medicine from his future father in law. Here's a little context from before the passage we're going to read. After being sent away by Isaac and Rebekah to pursue a wife from the household of Laban, he experiences God and learns that God is with him. Now, he arrives to the land of Laban. He sees the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. He's immediately smitten. Head over heals in love. He does something that is extremely counter cultural for their time: He walks up to her and kisses her. He is SMITTEN. So he goes to ask for her hand in marriage from Laban. What Laban does next is sinful, but God will use this experience to shape and purify Jacob.
We're going to be reading from Genesis 29:16-28. I'll be reading from the CSB, but I invite you to read along in whatever translation you have in your Bible or that you prefer in your Bible app. You can follow along in Genesis 29:16-28 on the screen as well. Hear now the word of the Lord.
16 Now Laban had two daughters: the older was named Leah, and the younger was named Rachel. 17 Leah had tender eyes, but Rachel was shapely and beautiful. 18 Jacob loved Rachel, so he answered Laban, “I’ll work for you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”
19 Laban replied, “Better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay with me.” 20 So Jacob worked seven years for Rachel, and they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.
21 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Since my time is complete, give me my wife, so I can sleep with her.” 22 So Laban invited all the men of the place and sponsored a feast. 23 That evening, Laban took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob, and he slept with her. 24 And Laban gave his slave Zilpah to his daughter Leah as her slave.
25 When morning came, there was Leah! So he said to Laban, “What have you done to me? Wasn’t it for Rachel that I worked for you? Why have you deceived me?”
26 Laban answered, “It is not the custom in our country to give the younger daughter in marriage before the firstborn. 27 Complete this week of wedding celebration, and we will also give you this younger one in return for working yet another seven years for me.”
28 And Jacob did just that. He finished the week of celebration, and Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as his wife.
The word of God for the people of God. thanks be to God
What an interesting way to begin your relationship with your father in law. I mentioned before that their culture was very different from ours. Jacob marrying two sisters would not be perceived as odd. However, what was strange was Laban's deception to Jacob. Their agreement seemed clear. Work for seven years, which would essentially pay his bride price for Rachel, and then he take Rachel as his wife. On his wedding night, his wife would likely be veiled. In the dim room with the veiled woman, he mistook Leah for Rachel. When he woke up and saw Leah next to him the next day. he was mighty displeased! I can't blame him! The thought of marrying someone other than who I thought would shock me too!
And by the way, yes, this passage is weird for me. It always has been. It's always nice going to church to hear that Rachel was beautiful and Leah was meh. Does great things for your self confidence as a teenager. But alas, the names are what they are. I asked my parents why they named me Leah. They heard a sermon on this very passage and said that they just liked the name. So here I am. I’ve gotten over it and claimed the name. Anyway, back to our text. I certainly cannot blame Jacob for being upset for Laban sending the other daughter.
Laban's excuse is that it was not the custom of their day to marry the younger before the older. That must have rang true to Jacob because even though God promised Jacob to be the next leader of the family in the Oracle, Esau the elder was the one who tried to claim it anyway because of the custom of their day. And yet Jacob knew the ways of God are often not the ways of man. Mankind puts priority on birth order. God Has different priorities. And certainly Laban's reasoning is nothing more than an excuse. Laban is trying to get more work. out of Jacob. This is pure selfishness on Laban's part. Nowadays, people talk about having strained relationships with their mother-in-law, but I think Jacob probably had a strained relationship with his father in law. Nothing like a good old deception to start a new family off strong. Alas, Laban allowed Jacob to marry Rachel fairly quickly and then work another 7 years. So Jacob was expecting to work seven years just for Rachel but then he had to work 14 years for both sisters including a wife that he didn't want in the first place. Laban was crafty to find a husband for Leah this way and to get the work out of Jacob that he would have likely not gotten from Jacob if he had not used deception. What a mess. And so Jacob got a taste of his own medicine through Laban.
If you recall Jacob deceived Isaac with the senses. He made himself feel and smell like Esau to deceive his blind father. Jacob in a way was blind because of the darkness and the veil and was tricked by Laban into marrying Leah. As Jacob deceived so he was also deceived.
It seems that God used Laban's deception to teach Jacob a lesson. So this brings us to the question: do the ends justify the means? I said last week that they don't. The plans of God in the ways of God are both equally significant. If someone doesn’t follow God’s ways, but God still uses their actions, what does it mean? You may wonder if that means the ends DO justify the means.
To answer that, I want us to consider four perspectives from the story. We’re going to look at what this story teaches us about humanity, sin, God, and salvation. And from that we'll be able to see how God might use even the sinful actions of others to accomplish his righteous judgment. Ultimately, we’ll see God’s judgment and plan shapes us to be who He intended.
The story of Laban's deception and the story of Jacob’s deceptions of Esau and Isaac show us just how selfish humanity is. It is our instinct to search out what is best for me by default. Jacob sought out the blessing of Isaac through deceptive means rather than trusting in God. Likewise Laban used deceptive means to marry off Leah and get more work out of Jacob rather than having an honest conversation and trusting God to provide a husband for Leah. In addition to human selfishness, this story also demonstrates to us how the sins of the parents get passed down to the children. Consider Rebekah. She coordinated the deception of Isaac. She is Laban’s sister who created this deception with his daughters. It is unlikely that Rebecca and Laban learned to be deceptive all on their own. We are all shaped by our parents. Very likely their parents also used deception to get what they wanted. And then we have Isaac who married Rebekah. We did not read these stories but Abraham also had his moments where he'd chosen deception out of fear rather than trusting in God. Isaac repeated these moments of deception in his own adult life. So we have Rebekah, who was likely taught deception from her parents, and we have Isaac who we know learned some deception from Abraham. And now we have Esau who is trying to sneak his way into the blessing despite the oracle of God, and we have Jacob who is going to try to steal the blessing even though it was already promised to him by God. Parents’ sins passes to their children. So not only are we selfish, but we are also prone to pass on our own sinful patterns to our children as we might pass down a hereditary health condition. A doctor may find solution to hereditary health issue, but only salvation by God can solve hereditary sin. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We’ll get to Salvation in a minute. So this story teaches us about human selfishness and our propencity to pass down our sin patterns to our children.
So we've already touched on it but what does this story teach us about sin? Sin really is like a hereditary condition passed down from parent to child. Our sin nature is not only innate but also influenced by our parents’ patterns. And then if our sinfulness makes us feel like we have gotten somewhere with it, we're likely to continue to go on sinning and reinforce those patterns in our lives and thus pass them down to the next generation. Oftentimes those sin patterns will come back to bite us. That's certainly what we see here with Jacob. The same sin patterns that he used to deceive his father are the same ones that were used against him.
We've talked about the negative sides of what the story teaches us about humanity and sin so let's move to the positive side. What does the story teach us about God? It teaches us that God is sovereign even over human sinfulness. God does not cause people to sin. Our sin nature is already present and we have those patterns we follow. What's amazing is that God can actually use our good and bad choices to accomplish his will. In this case God was able to teach Jacob what it's like to be deceived. This story teaches us that God can orchestrate the plans and ways of mankind to accomplish His greater will.
Lastly, what does the story teach us about salvation? Though there's no salvation directly in this story I think it shows the depth of humans sinfulness which necessitates salvation. And sometimes we have to endure deeply unpleasant things to realize the consequences of our own sins. When we are sinned against it can teach us the depth of our own sin. And if we have a relationship with God then it's more than just getting what we deserve so to speak. If we have a relationship with God then these moments are moments of sanctification. In sanctification God can teach us about the consequences and evils of sin so that we don't want to engage in it any more. Certainly part of sanctification can be feeling guilty for the sin that we've committed but that's not the end all of it. Once we repent of our sin and turn away from it, what are we turning towards? We are turning towards the love of God. Towards the ways of God that are good and build people up rather than tear them down. We're turning towards the ways of God that help us learn how God wants us to live rather than living in our sin patterns. Sanctification is more than just a how to quit sinning; sanctification is a lifelong journey in learning to pursue the love of God before all else.
So let's come back to our question. Do the ends justify the means? Does God using human actions to achieve his will imply the end justifies the means? No absolutely not! This just shows how sovereign God is. It shows how much in control God actually is. We believe in free will as Wesleyans. We have the freedom to make good choices and sinful choices. God has not preordained our choices for us. We get the choice. And so it's incredible to think that God can still orchestrate All the actions and choices of everyone on Earth to bring about his will. That does not mean that everything we see is God's will. It just means that even on a small scale when people do things against God's will, God can still use it to bring about his ultimate will. Think about Judas. Jesus would have still saved humanity without Judas’s betrayal. But God used even Judas’s betrayal to bring about salvation through Jesus. Judas’s choice of betrayal was his own and was not God’s will, but God used it for his ultimate will of salvation.
Similarly, Laban’s deception of Jacob was not God’s will, just as Jacob’s deception of Isaac was not God’s will. Laban’s deception taught Jacob the difference between living in deceit and embracing God’s promises. Jacob has more to learn, though. He certainly seems like a slow learner sometimes. Abraham seemed to get it so fast. I think Jacob is more relatable. We have to have the same lesson taught to us over and over again before we really understand it.
And that brings me back to the illustration from earlier. The sword as it's being forged goes through many rounds of purification and I mentioned that it doesn’t look pleasant for the sword itself. In fact sometimes sanctification can be painful. But God can bring good and bad things together for good. God uses experiences, good and bad, to shape us. Who we are in our sin is not who God made us to be. If we lived without the Fall we would still be us but without sin. And so sanctification makes us who God intended us to be. Do you struggle to know who you really are? Who better than to tell you who you're meant to be and how you're meant to live than your Creator? Through sanctification, God can teach you what is truly you and what is the sickness of sin. God can purge the hereditary illness of sin out of you. And though it may be painful at times. He’s making you into something even more wonderful than a sword. Even the best made swords can be broken. But God’s sanctification of you, if allowed, will not be broken.
As Wesleyans we believe in something called entire sanctification or Christian perfection. If you've seen my blog I've entitled it A Heart Perfecting. In my first post I talked about how I struggle with perfectionism and so it was challenging for me to understand Christian perfection. But when you understand it as it's meant to be it actually makes a lot of sense. We believe that God's grace is immensely more powerful than our sin. Grace prevails over our ongoing battle with sin as believers. We believe it is possible to allow God to sanctify us so much that we reach Christian perfection. Christian perfection is when you are pursuing the things of God and the ways of God and letting God's love transform you to such a degree that you no longer willfully sin. Christian perfection is not something you can reach by trying harder, but it is simply by allowing God to transform you. It is something that God does and you allow God to do. The sanctification process can be painful at times but it is good and it makes you into something wonderful. It makes you into who you are meant to be. It makes you into someone who does not pursue deception to get what you want but somebody who pursues God because you know that God's plan is always best. Did you hear that shift? From thinking about yourself and what you want to thinking about what God wants because you already trust that God's gonna take care of you.
While we believe in Christian perfection, we also know that our salvation won't be fully realized until we get to heaven. When we get to heaven we will fully be who God made us to be. Our hearts and minds will be fully set on God and His will. And we will fully trust that we know we're going to be okay because God is always taking care of us.
On All Saints Day, we honor those who have gone before us. Perhaps some of them did reach Christian perfection and perhaps some of them did not. But now we know that they have fully realized their salvation. That they are now with God they are who they were meant to be all along with hearts full of God’s love. I know you miss them. I have people I miss too. For me, knowing they are with God brings peace and joy. And someday when it's our turn we'll join them too. We are going to remember and celebrate their lives.
As you remember them I want you to know that they had their own sanctification journeys which can encourage you as well. Perhaps there's something about them that can inspire you in your own journey. Perhaps there's a story that makes you want to submit to God more. A story that makes you want to submit to God just a little more. Though they’re in heaven, may the memory of their lives help guide your relationship with God and faith journey. Again it's not about you working harder, but it's about you allowing God to change and transform you. So as you remember the Saints who have gone before I hope you will also remember that God is seeking to sanctify you every day too. And I also hope you'll remember that you will see these folks again someday in heaven.
Let’s pray together. Dear Heavenly Father I thank you that nothing goes to waste. Our endured sin doesn’t go to waste, nor does our committed sin. You use all things for your plan. We thank you that we can trust you to do such wonderful work. God, we thank you for those who have gone before us. Those who have finished their journey of sanctification and who are now in your presence at all times. Help us feel your comfort as we miss them so much from our own lives. But we know that they are joyful and fulfilled in you. Help us to trust you as they trusted you and be inspired by their walks of faith. In Jesus name, Amen.