Genesis 30:25-43 - Homiletics

Jacob and Laban, or craft versus greed.

I. JACOB 'S RESPECTFUL REQUEST OF LABAN . At the close of fourteen years harsh and exacting service, Jacob desires permission to take his wives and children and return to Canaan. The motives which induced him were probably—

1. The termination of his contract, which released him from a servitude both galling and oppressive.

2. The remembrance of God's covenant, which had assigned him the land of promise as his true inheritance.

3. The joy occasioned by the birth of Rachel's child, whom he seems to have regarded as the theocratic heir.

4. A desire to pro vide for his now rapidly-increasing household.

II. JACOB 'S SELFISH HINDRANCE BY LABAN . That Jacob's uncle and father-in-law was unwilling to acquiesce in his departure and solicitous to retain him was due to—

1. His appreciation of Jacob's qualities as a flock-master. Jacob felt he could appeal to "the service he had done" for the past fourteen years.

2. His discovery of a latent connection between Jacob's presence and his own augmenting prosperity. Laban, poor enough before his nephew's arrival, had shrewdly noted that the day of Jacob's coming had been the day of fortune's turning in his favor, and that, wherever his clever "brother" went, flocks and herds broke out beside him.

3. His secret hope of effecting easy terms with Jacob. Though ostensibly willing to take him at his own price, he was clearly calculating that he would not have much difficulty in over-reaching the man whom already he had cheated in the matter of his daughters.

III. JACOB 'S REMARKABLE CONTRACT WITH LABAN . He agrees to serve a third time with Laban on condition of receiving all the speckled and spotted, ringstraked and brown, animals that Laban's flocks might produce, after all- of those sorts had been previously removed.

1. The proposal of such a singular condition on the part of Jacob was an act not of folly, but of faith, being tantamount to a committal of his cause to God instead of Laban.

2. The acceptance of it on the part of Laban was a pitiful display of greed, and a proof that the bygone years of prosperity had both awakened in his soul the insatiable demon of avarice and extinguished any spark of kindly feeling towards Jacob that may have once existed in his breast.

IV. JACOB 'S CUNNING STRATAGEM AGAINST LABAN .

1. The nature of it. This was the employment of a triple artifice:

2. The success of it. That Jacob's stratagem did not fail is apparent; but how far it was due to the particular expedient employed cannot be so easily determined. That impressions made upon the minds of sheep at rutting time affect the fetus seems a well-established fact; but the extraordinary rapidity with which brown and speckled animals were produced appears to point to the intervention of a special pro vide nce in Jacob's behalf.

3. The rightness of it. That in what Jacob did there was nothing fraudulent may be inferred from the fact that he acted under the Divine approval ( Genesis 31:12 ), and made use of nothing but the superior knowledge of the habits of animals which he had acquired through his long experience in keeping sheep.

V. JACOB 'S ULTIMATE ADVANCEMENT OVER LABAN . This comes out with greater prominence in the ensuing chapter; the present notices his amazing prosperity. "The man increased exceedingly;" and, in spite of Laban's craft and avarice come blued, eventually eclipsed him in the possession of flocks and herds.

Learn—

1. The attractive influence of home, both temporal and spiritual.

2. The danger of material prosperity—exemplified in Laban.

3. The wisdom of trusting God in all things, even in secular callings.

4. The value of all kinds of knowledge, but especially of the best.

5. The advantage of having God upon our side in all our bargains—notably when dealing with the selfish and mean.

6. The right to use all lawful means to preserve our interests—particularly against such as would invade them.

7. The possibility of the last outstripping the first—in the Church as well as in the world.