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Welcome to the Gospel in Life podcast. We're excited to share a special episode with you today. It's one of Tim Keller's most shared sermons. The Girl Nobody Wanted in the Book of Genesis, Leah's life is shaped by disappointment and unmet longing. Yet her story mirrors our own search for meaning. Why are we always so sure that the next thing, whether it be success, love or recognition, will finally make us feel whole, only to find that the satisfaction never lasts? Today, Dr. Keller shows how the Gospel rescues us from the weight of unfulfilled expectations, ultimately inviting us to find our true identity in Christ and his redeeming work on the cross.
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We just finished a series in the Old Testament of sermons and messages on how, from the Old Testament, how we can search for God, how we do spiritual searching. And we're about to start a series of messages out of the teaching of Jesus himself on how to do spiritual finding. And we're going to look at all the places where Jesus talks about finding. But I'm going to do something that I hardly ever do today and what I'm going to do almost always, virtually always, maybe only twice in my life, I'm not going to preach on the text that's been announced because there's been a particular passage, a particular text that a has just been doing a real number on my heart. It's a very, very. It's a fascinating place that clarifies what the Gospel message is. Secondly, it doesn't fit, from what I can tell, into any series that I can conceive of in the indefinite future. And thirdly, it's appropriate because we just witnessed a wedding. I'm going to read you a passage out of the old Testament, Genesis 29. And one of the things that we learn right away, we're struck with immediately is that the Bible is the most unsentimental, the most unsentimental of all books when it comes to the subject of marriage and family. It is utterly realistic about this, that it is always hard and often devastating to not be married. And it is always hard and sometimes devastating to be married. And, you know, in order to keep this biblical understanding, this biblical balance, it's very difficult because there's almost no, no support for it institutionally, structurally, outside this church, for example, or outside Christian circles, in the secular world at large. There's a tremendous amount of fear and a tremendous amount of cynicism about marriage with good reason, as because of one of the things I just said that the Bible talks about. On the other hand, inside Christian circles, there is a tendency to say, ah, marriage. That's what's life's about. Marriage, family, kids, white picket fence. And both the Bible says. Both of those attitudes are utterly wrong, both of them, because Jesus. The Bible does not show us Jesus Christ pointing to marriage, saying, this is what you need. But rather the Bible shows us marriage, both in its strengths and even in its tremendous difficulties, pointing to Jesus Christ as the thing we need. Now, that's never been more obvious. When I read you this account, I'm going to read Genesis 29, verses 15 to 35. Now, after Jacob had been with Laban for a month, Laban said to him, just because you are a relative of mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be. Now, Laban had two daughters. The name of the older was Leah. The name of the younger was Rachel. Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form and beautiful. Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, I'll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel. Laban said, it's better that I should give her to you than some other man stay here with me. So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. Then Jacob said to Laban, give me my wife. My time is completed. I want to lie with her. So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. And when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob. And Jacob lay with her. And Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter Leah as her maidservant. But when morning came, behold, it was Leah. So Jacob said to Laban, what is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you deceived me? And Laban replied, it is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. Finish this daughter's bridal week, and then we'll give you the younger one also in return for another seven years of work. And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah. And then Jacob Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. Laban gave his servant girl Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maidservant. And Jacob lay with Rachel also. And he loved Rachel more than Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years. Now, when the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he opened her womb, though Rachel was barren. And Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben. For she said, it is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me. Now she conceived again. And when she gave birth to a son, she said, because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too. So she named him Simeon. And again she conceived. And when she gave birth to a son, she said, now at last my husband will become attached to me because I have borne him three sons. And so he was named Levi. And she conceived yet again. And when she gave birth to a son, she said, this time I will praise the Lord. So she named him Judah. And then she stopped having children. This is God's word. Now, you need to know two things as background of the story. And then we'll look at two features of the story. And then we'll see some remarkably rich stuff in here for all of us. First of all, there's two things you have to know as background of this story. You have to know that Jacob came from a family chosen by grace and a family filled with suffering. Jacob had a grandfather named Abraham. And one day God comes to Abraham and he says, abraham, look at the world. Do you see the misery? Do you see the cruelty? Do you see the injustice? Do you see the disease? Do you see the tragedy? Do you see death itself? I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to heal it. I'm going to redeem it all. And I'm going to do it through your family. One of your descendants will be the Messiah. So he says to Abraham. And therefore, this is what has to happen. You need to know that in every generation of your family, there'll be children. But one of the children will be the seed. One child will be the messianic seed, the bearer of the messianic strain. And that child should be head of the family. And that child must walk before me. And that child must pass the true faith along to all of the family. Because of all those children, one of them will be the true seed. And on and on until some day, one seed will be the seed, and one prophet will be the prophet. And one priest will be the priest, and one king will be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that was why this is a very special family Jacob was part of, but also in spite of that. And this is a lesson all by itself. This is a family filled with suffering, because Jake, Abraham had one son, Isaac. But when Isaac's wife Rebecca was pregnant and she had two twin sons in her womb, God sent a prophecy to Isaac and said, the elder will serve the younger, and that Means God was saying to Isaac, the second one out is the seed. Not the first one, not the elder, but the younger. That's the seed. That's the one I've chosen. But out they come, Jacob and Esau. And what Isaac does is. Ignores what God says. He puts his heart on Esau and he favors. Esau clearly favors, loves him more than Jacob. And as a result, devastation is wreaked on both the boys as they grow up. Their characters are ravaged by this. Because not only does Esau grow up to be willful and proud and with no self control at all because of the way in which Isaac dotes on him and clearly makes him the favorite. Jacob turns into a liar. Jacob turns into a deceiver. Jacob turns into a manipulator. And many of you know this story. What happens is when they come to. They come of age. Jacob one day deceives his father. His father's old and he's blind. And Jacob dresses up as Esau, goes in and gets Isaac to give Jacob the blessing, to give Jacob the birthright, to give Jacob the head of the clan. But when Esau realizes what he has done, how he's deceived, Esau vows to kill him. And so Jacob has got to run and he flees. Far, far away, over across the fertile. The desert, the other side of the Fertile Crescent, where his. His wife, pardon me, his mother's relatives take him in. His uncle Laban takes him in. But now, you see, Jacob's life's over. Jacob isn't. Isn't sure if it's God that screwed up, if he's the one who screwed up, if his father, his family screwed up. But he'll never fulfill his destiny now. He's got no faith. It's all ruined. He's got no money, he's got no place. He's not in his homeland anymore. It's all over the story. That's the background. You need to know two things about the background before you get to the story. But now the story has two parts to it. Laban's plot and Leah's lot. That's the two parts of the story. First of all, Laban, Laban's plot. Laban is the uncle. And Laban has, you know, brings Jacob in sort of as a charity case. And Jacob's working for him for a month as a shepherd. And Laban suddenly realizes something. He looks and he says, this guy's a great shepherd. This guy's got management capabilities. And he realizes that if Jacob becomes a foreman for him, he could tremendously expand his operation, and he could make a tremendous amount of money as long as he doesn't have to pay Jacob too much. And so he comes to Jacob and he says, I'd like to give you a contract. You know, what do you want in order to work for me? And Jacob says, rachel, Now, Jacob really screwed up here because when you're talking to a shyster, when you're talking to a con artist, you never let them know your area of weakness. As soon as Laban sees this, as soon as he realized this guy will do anything for Rachel, Laban's got him. Why? Because in Laban, Jacob has met his match. Because Jacob's a liar, Jacob's a con artist, and so is Laban. But Laban's been out at 25 more years, and as a result, you see, he's much more experienced at this. And so Laban says, I got a way that I can deal with two problems at once. I will use this man, I will exploit this man's weakness to deal with two problems at once. So what are the two problems? Well, the first problem, of course, is how do I make lots and lots and lots of money? How do I get out of this guy a tremendous amount of valuable skill with very little to pay for it so I can become a wealthy man? But his second problem is Leah. This man had two daughters. And the verse, of course, you might remember, I tried to read it slowly, but I probably didn't. It says now, Laban had two daughters. The older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form and beautiful. Now, if you go to various translations, you'll find that every single one of the translations will describe Leah's eyes differently. Some will say she had tender eyes. Some will say she had delicate eyes. Some will say she had broken eyes, you know, because that's what the word really means, is a breakable, fragile thing. And nobody really quite knows exactly what the word means, but it's not that hard when you look at the context, you see. Does it say, when it uses the word weak, does it mean that Leeah's vision was weak? Well, if it says Leah's vision was weak, it should say Leah had weak vision, but Rachel could see a long, long way. But that's not what it says. It's not talking about how they looked. It's talking about how they looked. It's not talking about how they looked with their eyes. It's talking about what they look like, what it's really saying Is this. These were two girls. These were not women yet, almost for sure. And you had two girls here, and one of them had either cross eyes or protruding eyes or some kind of eye disorder. But whatever it was, she was ugly and Rachel was gorgeous. One was an ugly duckling who would never become a swan, and one was absolutely gorgeous. And these two girls had had to grow up together with each other. And Laban had a problem. Now, listen, here's where the Bible is brutally frank. And if you say, ah, thank goodness we're beyond all this. Oh, are we? Are we? Laban says, I'll never marry this poor woman off. I'll never marry this daughter off. I have a way to get rich and get rid of the daughter that would be around my neck for the rest of my life. That's the kind of man he was. And so what does he do? Well, it's pretty interesting. Jacob says, I worked for Rachel for seven years. What does Laban say? Verse 19. It's better that I give you to you. It's better that I give her to you than to some other man. So stay here with me. He didn't say yes. In other words, he said something that led Jacob to believe he was saying yes. But he would always be able to come back later and say, jacob, read the fine print. He says, it's better for you that. Better for me that she should go to you than some stranger. But he didn't say yes. So Jacob goes for seven years. And then finally Jacob says, now I've done my seven years. Send me my wife. Labor says, fine. And of course, at the time of the, as you might have noticed this, a wedding feast was a week long. And as we'll get into this in a minute, Jacob, of course, was just more happy than he's than most people at wedding feasts, because now I have Rachel. Now finally something's going right in my life. Finally something will console me for all the problems I've always had. And so everybody begins the feast, and everybody begins to get drunk. And right in the middle of the very first night, in comes the wife, in comes the bride, all veiled, and they embrace, and they are married. And they go into the tent and they lie together and they go to bed together. And the Hebrew literally says, and it's a great narrative ploy, the Hebrew literally says, but when morning came, behold, it was Leah. Jacob goes and says, why have you done this to me? And Laban says, wait, it's the custom. I mean, you know, you can't marry the younger Daughter off before the older. It's not illegal here. This is the custom. This is the way we do things. You have to have the older daughter, has to be married before the younger and lovesick Jacob says, well, what do I do? And he says, I'll tell you what, you can marry Rachel, too, but you have to work another seven years for her. And Jacob says, yes. And now because of all this greed and now because of all this manipulation and these deceiving men, Leah is thrown into hell. Leah, who probably could have hardened her heart had she stayed single for a long time. She could have dealt with the fact that she was unwanted, dealt with the fact that in a world like this, she was not marketable. You say, oh, we're beyond all that. Are we beyond all that? Is our society that different? And she might have been able to harden her heart, but because of these men, she is now put into a situation where she is married to a man who not only doesn't love her, and many, many people have that, but the person that she does love is also a wife. Right there, it's her sister, and she's put into hell. And the last verses of this passage are the most plaintive I know of hardly anywhere in the Bible of any place. Because every time she names a child, when she begins to have children, she says, now, now, maybe my husband will love me now, maybe I'll have some meaning in life. And every time she actually uses the. She names Reuben. Reuben. Because Reuben means I'm seen, and Simeon means I'm heard, and Levi means I'm attached. And every time a child comes along, she says, now, maybe finally I'll be visible. Now, maybe finally I'll be heard. Now, maybe finally he'll cleave to me, see? And every time, surely now my husband will love me now. And it never happens, but in the last verse, this is what we read. In the very last verse we read. And finally she conceived again. And when she gave birth to a son, she said, this time I will praise the Lord. So she named him Judah, and she stopped having children. And that's the gospel. What? Let's draw out the lessons, and let's do the way the gospel does, okay? Six lessons, three bad news, three good news. That's how the gospel goes. Lots of bad news at the beginning. But then the good news is so much gooder than the bad news was bad. Now, let's take the first three. There's three things here. Let's do the bad news. There's a lot of bad news in this story number one. Ready? You never do sin. Sin does you. You never commit sin. Sin commits you. Look carefully. People think that when you do a sin, when you break God's law, when you lie, when you use somebody, when you trample on somebody, when you sin, you feel like that's just an event, that's just an action. No, it's not. The Bible says that when you sin, you don't just do an event and you pass on. You create and you release a devastating power that careens around your life indefinitely. Look at what's going on here. I mean, there's so many examples of this in here. And I wish. I don't have time. I'm not going to trace them all out. Look what Isaac does to Jacob. Look at how he favors Esau. Look at how he. Look at what he does to Jacob. And now look what's going on. Reverb. Jacob is doing the very same thing to Leah that his father did to him. And not only that, because of what Isaac did to Jacob, Jacob does it back to Isaac. You see? And eventually, of course, if you keep on going down, the fact that he does this to Leah means that Leah's children hate Rachel's children when they finally show up. Joseph. And because Leah's children hate Rachel's children because of the way in which Jacob sinned and deceived, they eventually sell Joseph into slavery. And then they deceive Jacob and say he's dead. And Jacob goes through utter hell. Hell begets hell. Lie begets lie. Sin begets sin. You never sin. You don't do, does you? You never sin and pass away. Sin is like a boulder, not onto the stone. Sin is like dropping a boulder into water. Shock waves. They go out forever. Friends, listen. You never get away with it. You never get away with it. Anything that's a violation of God's will for how people should live here and how people should live together. You never get away with it. You don't do sin. Sin does you. That's the first bit of bad news. Second bit of bad news. And that is all. Life here is marked by cosmic disappointment. Cosmic disappointment. Now, I. Listen, I want to say something quickly. Having read this thing and thought about this thing and thought about this passage, I want you to know that I love Leeah and I am protective of her in this story. But for a minute, I gotta tell you that she represents something very bad. One of the most fascinating things in the narrative is the way it turns on you. Because here is Jacob saying, finally, finally, I'm gonna have happiness in this life. Finally, finally, finally, I've got Rachel. But behold, in the morning, it was Leah. And there is a very interesting little commentary written by one of my favorite writers, Derek Kidner. And he puts it this way. Derek Kidner says, but in the morning, behold, it was Leah. This is a miniature of our disillusionment experienced from Eden onwards.
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Jonah is one of the most widely known stories in the Bible, but it's so much more than a simple account of a prophet who runs from God and gets swallowed by a great fish. In his book Rediscovering Jonah, Tim Keller uncovers the deeper message of this familiar story, revealing how Jonah's resistance to God exposes our own reluctance to trust and obey him, and how Jonah's experience ultimately points us to Jesus and his saving work on the cross. During the month of May. We'll send you a copy of Rediscovering Jonah as our thanks for your gift to help gospel and life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today@gospelandlife.com give. That's gospelandlife.com give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.
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You know what he's saying? He's saying this is a miniature of a fact that everybody in this room needs to know. You critically need to know it, and that is this. No matter what your hopes for a project, no matter what your hopes for marriage, no matter what your hopes for love, no matter what your hopes for a career, no matter what you have hopes in in the morning, it will always be Leah. No matter what you think is Rachel, it will always be Leah. Now, nobody ever put it. Nobody ever put it any better than Lewis. C.S. lewis. In his chapter on hope, he says, most people, if they really learn to look into their own hearts, and that's what I'm urging you to do right now. Most people, if they really learn to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can ever really satisfy. I am not speaking of what would ordinarily be called successful marriages or holidays. Pardon me. I'm not speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages. Or failures of holidays and so on. I'm speaking of the very best possible ones. There is always something we have grasped at. There's always something in that first moment of longing but fades away in the reality. The spouse may be a good spouse, the scenery has been excellent. It turned out to be a good job, but it's evaded us. In the morning, it's always Leah. Now the reason you have to understand that is because I tell you it's painful to overhear people's lives. You notice what I said? I didn't say overhear people's words because people don't say these things out loud. But you can. You hear in their life. You hear it. I overhear it when I see people's choices. I overhear it when I see people's attitudes, when I see what they're doing and that is this. You overhear people saying essentially, oh, I'm going to have such a career, I'm going to get myself a hunk, I'm going to get myself a babe and I'm going to live in this place and I'm going to live in this place and I'm going to live in this place and I am going to have a life. In the morning, it's always Leah. This is a miniature of the disillusionment which is our lot from Eden onwards. And your life, eventually, I tell you, eventually it is definitely going to come through. Eventually you're going to see it and when you do, there's only four possible ways of responding to that. There's only four ways to go and you're going to have to choose one of them and it will totally shape the rest of your life. You'll either say, you'll either blame the things you have and say I've got to get better ones. Better woman, better man, better job. Or secondly, you'll blame yourself and just hate yourself. Or thirdly, you'll blame life and you'll harden yourself so you'll never hope for anything at all. Or fourthly, you can blame your theory of reality and you can say if there's nothing in this world that ever is Rachel, then Rachel must be beyond this world. If there's nothing in this world that ever satisfied me, then it means I am made for something beyond this world. Now there's only four possible answers. Four possible responses. Which one is it going to be? One makes you a fool, one makes you a self hater, one makes you an utterly hard cynic and one makes you a Christian. Now thirdly, and it's Very linked. First of all, the first bit of bad news is sin. You never do sin. Sin does you. Secondly, all life is marked by cosmic disappointment in the morning. It's always Leah, always. Thirdly, but as bad as life is, you make it much worse through idolatry, and especially the idolatry of a family. Now, I know this may sound very strange, but what we have here is a form of idolatry where you put your hope in something to give you a sense of being loved, being valuable, giving your life meaning. And this is not. These are not idols of the liberal world. These are idols of the conservative world. Because Jacob says, if I get this gorgeous wife on my arm, if I marry, then I finally will have happiness. And it didn't work. And poor Leah, she turns and says, if I have a child, if I have children, if I have sons, if I have this wonderful family, then I'll be worth something, then I'll be loved. And it never works. Don't you know that when you build your life on white picket fence, when you build your life on either before or after it happens, on being married and having a perfect family and all of your children growing to be so happy, The Bible comes against that, huh? Well, doesn't the Bible come against immorality and adultery and orgies and living together and, you know. Well, yeah, some other place. That's not the text we have here. We got a text coming against conservative idols. Here we have a text coming against traditional values. We have a text that's saying if you build your life a spouse, at the very best, you'll be emotionally dependent or you'll be controlling, you'll be judgmental. And if anything goes wrong with that spouse, if that spouse has any problems, you will go to pieces and you'll be of no help to that spouse or anybody else. If you build your life on your children, at the very least, you'll try to live your life out through your children till they either hate you or they don't have any identity of their own. And at worst, you'll end up abusing them because they have got to be good, they have got to be right, they've got to love you or you don't have a wife. And again and again you see Leah saying, ah, a son. Now, does she just fit right in with traditional values? Especially at the time you're nobody unless you have children, You're a woman, so you must have children. And she does, and it doesn't work. If she'd had a nicer husband, she might have Been able to live in the delusion for a longer time, but fortunately for her, she didn't. And she came to see that idols always make the disappointment of this world far, far, far worse. Now, that's the bad news. But what's the good news? The good news is gooder than the bad news, was bad. Three things. First of all, the good news is that God works with very weak people. Now, somebody here, surely this is New York, somebody out there is saying, this is the stuff I hate in the Bible. Why did you bring something out like this? Here you've got Jacob, and look how he's oppressing these women. Look at how he's acting. Polygamy, bigamy. Look at women being, you know, moved around and abused and sold. And look at this. This is what I hate about the Bible. Now, dear friends, we could spend a little bit of time on that in the whole Bible, every place the Bible condemns bigamy, polygamy, every part of God's law. And if you think that this text showing us the absolute misery and hell that comes when women are treated like this, if you think this text in any way condones that, this text is a screed against that. But that's not your real problem. The reason when people read these kinds of stories, they get so bummed out and they get confused is this. You have got a spiritual paradigm I want to shatter right now. When you read the Bible and you see, I all this stupidity and all this stab in the back and all this foolishness on the part of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and everybody, you say, what's going on here? You know why you're so upset? Because you think the Bible should be a book of virtues. You think the Bible should be a series of inspirational stories with role models. You think the Bible should be a series of stories of heroes. And that proves that you don't understand the gospel. The Bible is not about role models. It's not about emulating these great people. The Bible gives you a gift. And again and again, men and women who God continues to work with, even though they resist his grace, they don't deserve his grace, they don't seek his grace, and then they don't even appreciate it after they've been saved by his grace. And it's story after story after story. Now, why would God give us stories like that? Why would God continue to work with this guy? Unless you're incredibly proud, you don't realize what incredibly good news this is. How can you be offended at this unless you have a Tremendously, unrealistically high view of yourself, my dear friends. Listen, you think if you think the Bible should be a book of virtues, inspirational stories of role models we should be emulating, that means you think that the Bible should be like all the other scriptures and all the other religions, but that they're not. Because every other religion says God is at the top of a ladder. He's put a ladder down between you and heaven, you know, heaven and earth. And he's standing at the top of the ladder and he's saying, perform, do good, live right, emulate the heroes. If you try real hard, you can come up the ladder to heaven. But Jesus Christ said, you will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Because Jesus Christ said, you'll never come up the ladder. You'll never emulate. Look at all these guys. Look at all they have. Revelation from God, they have miracles in their lives. They have all kinds of incredible things happen to them and they screw up again and again and again. Our Bible, our God, the Christian God, is not a God who stands at the top of the ladder, but who sent his son down to be the ladder. He's not a God who says perform, but he says, God, my son, Jesus Christ will come down and live the life you should have lived and died the death you should have died. And that's the reason why the Bible stories are a series nod of stories of role models emulate. But weak people like you and me, whom a weak God had to come down and become weak and die on the cross to save us. God works with weak people. That's the first good news. Second good news, God works through weak people. Laban really hurt Leah, didn't he? Laban really hurt Jacob, didn't he? And yet I'm going to be very fast and it's going to be 30 seconds because I'm going to move on to the last point. If you understand how God used Laban in their lives, you'll see that it was only because of Laban and all of his shysterness and all of his meanness that Jacob finally began to get humbled. You know the reason a lot of commentators say, oh my goodness, why is it that Jacob didn't put up more of a fuss when he realized what Laban was doing? He could have insisted. He could have said, no way, seven more years for Rachel. Why didn't he? Because he realized what was happening to him was exactly what he'd been doing. He saw himself in Laban and he hated it. He finally began to Come around. He finally began to get some perspective. He finally began to realize who he really was and what he'd really done. See, God works in your life through weak people. Right now, there's a laban in your life. Instead of just screaming, why in the world, Lord, have you put this laban in my life? You have to realize that God works not just with weak people, but he works in your life through weak people. But lastly, God is attracted. He's attracted to the weakest. See, he doesn't just work with and work through, but he works in the weakest and the most broken of all. This is what is so astounding. Leah. Now, one thing you can't realize as you watch her cry out to God and talk about how I want my husband to love me, maybe now is that she uses a vocabulary that commentators over the years have been struck by. There's two words that are used for God in the Old Testament. In your English translation, the one word is the word translated God. And it's translated, I said God, okay? And it's. And it's the Hebrew word Elohim. It's a generic name for God. It just means God. And everybody used the word. All religions, all people, everybody used the word God. It meant the Great One. But when God came down to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, he gave them a new name. He gave them a personal name. It was the name Yahweh. And in the Old, this word Yahweh was a word that. A name he only gave to people to whom he was also giving the story of salvation. He only said Yahweh to people who said, to whom? He said, I want you to believe my promise that through a descendant, I will save the world. And every place the word Yahweh shows up. In the English Old Testament, you don't see the word God translated. What do you see? The Lord. And Leah floundering around like a mad woman, doing anything she can to deal with the hell she's in. Anything she can to start to feel like, how do I get out of this? I always knew I was homely. I always knew that I was, you know, in the world's eyes, I was nothing. And now every day, it's just pushed into my face. How am I going to survive this? And she says, a child. A child. But every time she has a child, she cries out and she faces her husband, now my husband will save me. Now my husband will love me. And she looks at the child, but she also says, every time the Lord, she begins to Call the name Yahweh. Now, wait a minute. What happened? Where did Leah hear about what Leah must have heard the promise, the promise of the seed, the promise of salvation. And she began not just to believe in a general God at the top of the ladder to whom she must submit, which is what everybody else in the world believed. But she began to grab hold of, at first only partially, of the idea of the Lord, Yahweh, the God who will save by grace. And what's so fascinating is, look carefully and you will see if you go back and read this passage, that she's turning to her husband. To her husband until the very end. And at the very, very end, something changes. Something radically changes. Every time she says, now my husband will love me. Now my husband will love me. Now my husband will love me. And then it says, she conceived again. And then she gave birth to a son. And she said, this time I will praise the Lord. Now what did she do? Finally, no talk about her husband. What had happened? Through this suffering, she stopped turning to her husband. She stopped looking to her children. She stopped looking to anything else. And she said, I'm going to praise the Lord. And at that moment, she got her life back. At that moment, Laban, Jacob, all the people who had abused her and abused her. As long as she had stayed in the idolatry, she would have been a slave. But at that point, she stood up and she got her life back. And more than that, look who was the child when she finally stopped turning from her husband, when she stopped turning from her husband, and she stopped looking to her husband for those things that only God can give. And when she finally turned to God, she said, this time I will praise the Lord. And the child was what it was. Judah. Who's Judah? Get this. God comes to Leah and says, you'll be the mother of Jesus. Cause Judah was the seed. But more than that, Leah became the seed. Leah the outsider. Leah the ugly. Leah the rejected. Because she grabbed hold with faith. She got her life back from all the people that had ruined it for her. She got it back. And God comes down and makes her into the seed. She goes ahead of her husband. She understands the gospel better than her husband. And at the very end, she stands up and God says, now, through your suffering, because you have come to understand the gospel of grace. You are the seed, and your son Judah is the seed. And you've become the mother of Jesus. Now, how could this be? How could this possibly be? Why would God choose Leah to do that? And the answer is right Here, when the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he came to her. And now we know. The Old Testament shows us what the New Testament really, really tells us. God loves those who others don't love. God is attracted because of his gracious nature. And he wants the ones that no one else wants. But more than that, when he sees a wife who's not loved, he shows that there's a heavenly bridegroom. He shows that there's a heavenly husband. Jesus Christ, the Bible tells us, is the bridegroom. He's not just the king and we're the servants. He's not just a shepherd and we're the sheep. He's the bridegroom and we're the bride. And what happened is Jesus Christ came to earth and died. He lost his true beauty, the beauty of a noble soul, the beauty of holiness. He lost his true beauty, lived the life we should have lived, died the death we should have died. So that when we believe in him, what we become his bride. I'll tell you what it is. So that though we may look like Leah, to Jesus Christ, we look like Rachel. That's the gospel. We might look like Leah in ourselves, but to Jesus Christ we look gorgeous. And that is exactly what God does. Here. We see here in the Old Testament a foretaste and a hint of the fact that God is the heavenly bridegroom. He sees the wife who's unwanted. That's the reason why God chooses the foolish to shame the wise. God chooses the weak to shame the strong. God chooses the things that are despised. Even the things that are not to bring to nothing, the things that are so that we might understand God's grace. Conclusion, if you're a person here who's still searching for God, you need to understand this. God is not the top of the ladder. He sent His Son to be the ladder. Secondly, if you're a person who is very upset whenever you get near a wedding because you're so angry that you're not married, or if you're still just incredibly desperate to be married, you've missed the point. In the morning, it's never what you thought. You cannot look to anything but Jesus. Jesus is the only. In heaven we have a father that will deal with all of our imperfect fathers. Here in heaven, we have a brother that will deal with all our imperfect families. In heaven we have a spouse that will deal with all our imperfect spouses. And until we make him the one, until we say, this time, I will praise the Lord, we'll never be able to deal with all the imperfection around us. Never. If there's anybody in this, in this building right now that feels like somebody else has ruined my life, look at Leah. What a picture. Leah gets her life back. She doesn't have to be bitter. She doesn't have to hate. She doesn't have to deceive back. She doesn't. She says, this time I will praise the Lord. I won't look to anything else to give me what only Jesus Christ can be for me. I will not add anything to Jesus Christ as a requirement for being happy. Do that and you'll get your life back. Is there anybody here who feels ugly? The only eyes that count are radiant with you. The only eyes that count are ravished by you. That's the only comfort that can't be quenched. Let's pray. Our Father, we pray that you'd help us to get that balance that is so difficult. Forgive us for the liberal idols and the conservative idols. Forgive us for all the ways in which we try to blame ourselves or our society or other people for what's wrong in our hearts. We pray that you would help us hear the good news that we can, like Leah, praise you and have your grace come into our life and be used for great things. We thank you that you made her into a great heart. We thank you that you brought her to greatness through her suffering because she came to understand the difference between salvation by grace and by works. We pray that you'd help everybody in this room to understand the same. In Jesus name, we ask it. Amen.
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Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel centered content by Tim keller anytime, visit gospelandlife.com Today's sermon was recorded in 1998. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.