God’s Mercy Over Our Desire to Take Control

We come to the part of Genesis where we don’t understand a few things. Why did God allow people to have multiple wives and why did God continue to be with His people when they obviously tried to do things their own way? The overall story of Genesis does more to undermine the idea that men can have multiple wives than any simple prohibition could. Genesis 2:24 strongly indicates that marriage as God instituted it was between one man and one woman. We can see through what happens as recorded in Genesis powerful shows the failure of this. We read through the story of Abraham and already saw the problems of Abraham’s relationship with Hagar while being married to Sarah, but the storminess of Jacob’s marriages to four women is laid out in the most detail. It is quite compelling evidence that having multiple wives doesn’t work.

Read Genesis 29:31-30:24

We get so invested in the characters of the story that we forget to see what we learn about the true main character in all of this. The main character is not Jacob, his wives, or his children, but we need to remember that God reveals more of Himself through a story like this. Let’s see how –

First, we see the ways God deals with the lovelessness of Leah. God shows his mercy and compassion by opening Leah’s womb so that she can have children. This is really important because it reinforces that God loves the outcast, the rejected, the outsider. God’s own son came as a poor man, a man who was rejected and killed. He brought salvation in the way of suffering and death, not achievement and power. All through history, therefore, God has preferred as the instruments of his salvation the ones the world rejects. He has to do this over and over again to break us of our addiction to status, influence, beauty, privilege.

God is the husband to Leah that Jacob is not. God is loving the wife who is unloved. God then gives her such a wonderful gift in children. We see however something interested after giving birth to her fourth and final son Judah, that she says “this time, I will praise the LORD”. Commentaries have point out that she finally seems to remove herself from her yearning for her husband’s love. She no longer is in a state of sadness and complaint but rather she finds joy and victory over her idolatry and seems to feel particularly blessed and loved by God. As we will see in the line of Jesus, that is actually Leah’s son Judah who is in this lineage. Not beautiful, loved Rachel, but unattractive rejected Leah. Why? Because even God’s foreshadowing of his salvation must be true to its nature. It is the way of the cross, of repentance, humility, unselfishness, sacrifice. God saves not the great and proud but those who know they are not great at all. It is the people that the world rejects who soonest grasp the gospel of grace.

And yet, God also does not reject Rachel. God opens her womb and she gives birth to Joseph. We will see that God has very special plans for Joseph as well and that he plans an important role and part in God’s history. Through him will come the first concrete fulfillment of God’s promise that through Abraham’s seed the nations of the earth will be blessed.

So we see that these stories show us more of God and His rich mercy for us. He uses every one of us and allows us to see that He wants to show his compassion and love to us. Look to this God to remind you of His great love for each one of us. Then be challenged to share that with those around us who need to hear that God is one that wants to love them.