I had been reading and thinking about how Jacob planned to marry Rachel, but ended up married to Leah first. As I was doing that, this phrase “let it be so now” came to mind. At first I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t just a random thought, and perhaps not worth thinking about. After a few minutes I began to see the connection.
These are the words that Jesus said to John the Baptist at the river Jordan when Jesus came to be baptised (Matthew 3 v 15). It was an odd situation. Jesus was asking John to baptise Him, but John was arguing, saying that actually he needed to be baptised by Jesus. ‘I think you’ve got this wrong Jesus…..’ only the day before John had been telling everybody that he wasn’t worthy to untie Messiah’s sandals. But for God’s plan and purpose, this was the way round that things needed to be done.
Now back to Jacob, Leah and Rachel. Jacob worked seven long years for his future Father-in-Law in order to be able to marry Rachel, Laban’s daughter. Laban tricked him and Jacob ended up married to Leah. The Bible simply says “in the morning, there was Leah!” They obviously did things a little differently then. When Jacob complained to Laban, he was basically told “well hey, some you win, some you lose. Welcome to our town.” Jacob then had to enter into another deal to work for another seven years to get Rachel, although wisely Laban allowed Jacob to marry Rachel straight away.
So the next bit of the story unfolds in Genesis 29 and 30. Jacob has two wives, Rachel and Leah. We are told that his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah, and that God saw that Leah was not loved.
Leah had four sons in succession; the first three were born under the shadow of Leah feeling unloved. Reuben was named so because his name sounds like the Hebrew for ‘the Lord has seen my misery’. At Simeon’s birth she lamented that she was not loved. At Levi’s birth she hoped that her husband would at last become attached to her. When the fourth son was born her attitude had changed. She was no longer focused on the things in her life that caused her pain – things she couldn’t alter anyway. Now her focus was off herself, off how rotten her life was, off what a bad deal she had had. Now her focus was on God. When Judah was born she said “This time I will praise the Lord”.
Judah became the founding head of the Tribe of Judah, the tribe that Jesus belonged to. Judah became the direct ancestor of Jesus, the Saviour of the world. When we take our eyes off the things that upset us, when we stop giving airtime to the raw deal that we have had and begin to focus on God, things of eternal significance begin to take place in our lives.
The second point to make is that for Jacob, the whole situation of being married to Leah and then having to work for another seven years in order to marry Rachel was not what he planned or wanted. He probably felt that he had just wasted seven precious years of his life. “Well that’s seven years I’m not going to get back!”
Nothing is wasted with God though. What might seem like wasted time to us may well be time that God is using to build something in us. What might look like an injustice or a mistake, God will turn and use. It might look as if everything has gone wrong, is completely back to front or in the wrong order and God simply says “Let it be so now…..trust Me….see what I will do”. It was important for Jacob to go through a situation in life that he would not have chosen, in order for God’s purpose to be worked out – for the Tribe of Judah to be born into existence leading eventually to the birth of Jesus.
Are there life circumstances that you are in that you would rather not be in? Do you know that God is busy using them for His purpose and your benefit?
The day always comes when we are able to look back and see how clearly the hand of God was at work. It is even better if we are able to perceive it now, in the middle of the circumstance, and work with Him as we go. Better than looking back in years to come and being embarrassed by how much we resisted and whinged! Let it be so for now…
Church is out there 