Jacob, Laban, Easu

Genesis: 28:10 - 35:29

What a mess.
I didn't blog over the weekend because, quite frankly, this whole set of stories is catching me off guard this time.
Multiple wives, sons sleeping with father's concubines, daughters sleeping with fathers, lying, cheating, stealing, deception...and this all from the "good guys"!!??!
I can see where you would get all kinds of divergent theological systems just out of these few chapters of Genesis.

• Rebekah is told the older will serve the younger and yet she helps Jacob deceive his way into Esau's blessing. Hence we get the old adage: "God helps those who help themselves"
• The apparently obvious lack of punishment for all the deceit could easily lead to arguments in favor of predestination and the distinction between those chosen and those not chosen.
• Do you read these and become a covenant theologian or a dispensational theologian or both?
• "Saved by grace not by works" otherwise most of these folks aren't saved!

Maybe we just need to turn these stories on their heads and realize that we ALL fall short of the Glory of God and His forgiveness is boundless if we turn to Him. Maybe the part of the story that we read through too lightly is not the seemingly bad stuff but rather the bits where these characters return to the Lord. Maybe in those bits they are expressing a deeper repentance than the words on the page are letting on. Maybe in that we can find hope that whatever we do, up to and including murder in the case of Israel's older sons, can be and is forgiven by God.
These stories certainly put a HUGE dent in the argument that God rewards instances of doing good and punishes instances of doing bad.
Maybe there is a deeper place in the heart that God sees that we can't see at all in others perhaps only get the tiniest glimpse of even within our own selves.
Maybe these generational stories are analogous to the decline that will happen later in Israel. Abraham is faithful, Isaac seems to be a little wavering, Jacob seems to really wobble back and forth...that kind of decline happens multiple times as we'll see in Kings and Chronicles.
But God is faithful through it all...maybe that is the point.