Good morning and happy Taco Tuesday. No tacos in China. It’s hard to believe that in the year 2019 that tacos have not permeated the entire Earth thoroughly. I mean we’ve got cell phones, Bluetooth and we even went to the moon 50 years ago this year, but we can’t get the people of the world tacos? When you get really desperate for “western food” in China you start digging pretty deep. We of course found McDonald’s (which is everywhere) and we found KFC. We even found some good pizza. But no matter how hard we tried we could not find any Mexican food, especially Tex-Mex. I often think about the food offerings of some future utopian society, something that would be much better than Soylent Green. It’d be pretty sweet to exist in a society that fed its citizens all the tacos and nachos they wanted. And also free wi-fi. Everywhere. And lots of puppies and kittens to play with. Yeah, that’d be a great society.
This morning I studied up on chapter 30 of Genesis and as I read through, I just sat back and scratched my head. Oh man are we people just a really messed up bunch. I’m sure at many times God has looked down upon my behavior and has done just the same, scratching His head in unbelief. We sinners just have a way of messing things up, don’t we? Even simple things can go awry when we put the unique human spin on things. And that’s exactly what we see this morning. Jacob is still living with good ol’ Uncle Laban and he now has the two lovely wives that we saw him gather yesterday, Leah and Rachel. Even though they were sisters we can see through todays text that there was little love lost between these two as they both greatly jockeyed for the love of their man. But out of the man’s messes come God’s miracles.
We start out seeing Rachel in a deep jealousy of Leah because Leah has given Jacob children, but she has not. In a dire, desperate custom of the day to ultimately save face, Rachel offers up her servant to Jacob. Now recall this is the same mess that Sarah and Abraham got into. The sins of the father will visit the grandson indeed. It didn’t work out well for Abraham and Sarah and it will not work out well here either. But to make things even more complicated, in an effort to keep up with Rachel, Leah offers her servant to Jacob. In the midst of this, both women also produce a few kids of their own. In a nutshell we see 8 children produced by 4 different women and only one man. Folks, if I hadn’t read this chapter myself, I would say the story came straight from an episode of Jerry Springer.
By the end of the chapter Jacob has 12 sons from 4 different women. But out of the messes of men come the miracles of God and as you might have guessed, these twelve sons will become non-other than the 12 tribes of Israel. Wow, how they got it done wasn’t pretty, but I guess with sinners it never is. But God has a flawless plan, a plan that is so immune to sin, that He can perfectly use imperfect people to get it done.
This in itself is such a comforting thought to me today. I don’t know if anybody has ever told you this, but you’re not perfect. Neither am I. Nor is any human that has ever walked this blue and green Earth. But simply look at what God has achieved. Miracle after miracle and he achieved it all through imperfect men and women. Amazing.
I very often pontificate on this, why God chooses to use the people He does to achieve the things He does. There were more than a mere 10,000 times that I asked God this in China last month. Why in the world am I here doing this? There are power pastors, super missionaries and all around good guys to get this stuff done, why are you choosing me? But I’ve learned in my journey with God that these questions can never be answered by men. When I studied on Saul and David recently, I came across a verse that summed it up perfectly as David is being chosen by God to succeed mean ol’ Saul.
“But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” 1 Sam 16:7
You see, the Lord has a selection criteria that is completely foreign to us. We as humans are simply incapable to look into the hearts of men. I think that is why we spend lifetimes of being disappointed in our fellow men and women. But the Lord can see. He can see deeply within our chests. Directly into a heart that either beats for Him or beats for ourselves. He chose David for his heart, not his perfection. He chose Moses for his patience not his public speaking. He chose Paul for his passion not his history. He chose Peter for his love not his humility. It is one of the biggest miracles of God that He can and does use sinners to achieve His perfect plan.
No matter what skeletons might be haunting you from your closet today, you can be assured that with a heart for God, He is not interested in those skeletons. He knows all about them, but He knows better than anyone that they no longer define you. If you have called upon the precious name of Jesus Christ to save you, all that defines you any longer is the atoning blood of Jesus. Shed those past sins and live today for Jesus. You are not perfect and neither am I, but my friends, God is in the business of using regular ol’ people like you and me to do His perfect work. Offer Him a pure heart, make yourself available and then walk in absolute obedience to Him and then…and only then…you’ll feel the single best feeling in all of existence. The pure satisfaction of being used by God.
God's miracles persist amongst the messes of man. Stand firm today for God and allow yourself to be used by Him. Your life will never be the same.
Blessings to you my brothers and sisters in Christ.
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