Genesis Chapter 30

Genesis 30

And he said, What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shalt not give me any thing: if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock: I will pass through all thy flock today, removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such shall be my hire. So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen with me.
(Gen 30:31-33)

And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and peeled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstreaked, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstreaked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle. And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods. But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.
(Gen 30:37-42)

Here we catch another glimpse of Jacob’s true nature… The supplanter, or as I like to call him, the “dirty – rotten – sneaky - thief”. Here he is, and instead of simply trusting the Lord to provide for him, he takes things into his own hands. As we read through the chapters in Genesis that cover Jacob’s life, we see more and more of this. From the birthright onward we see Jacob trusting his own sneaky schemes rather than leaving things in the hands of the Lord.

My challenge to you this morning is simple: as you go throughout your day today, and on into the rest of the week, take a hard look at why you do the things you do… Do you try and connive and convince your parents to let you do what YOU want, or do you trust things into the hands of the Lord? Jacob really had a difficult time with this, he was always leaning to his own devices. The Lord longs for us to trust Him, to abandon our own clever schemes, and lean on Jesus.

“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all of your ways acknowledge him, and HE will direct your paths” Proverbs 3:5-6