Genesis 31: The Man Who Hides, the God Who Gives Everything

Introduction

For several weeks, the Ueno Forest Christian Church (上野の森キリスト教会) in Tokyo has been following the story of Jacob. This Sunday, the church's pastor reaches Genesis 31: Jacob runs away from his uncle Laban. The message is titled "The Man Who Hides, the God Who Gives Everything."

For the pastor, this account is the prototype of the Exodus: an enslaved people leaves Egypt and walks toward the promised land. But it also contains a troubling detail: Rachel leaves her father's house carrying his idols, hidden. This gesture, he says, repeats itself throughout the Old Testament, and even in the New, when the apostle Peter, after understanding that we are saved by faith, backs away to spare those who demanded circumcision.

From the start, the pastor lays out the heart of his message with Colossians 1:13: God has delivered us out of the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love. The one who saves us is the Father himself. It is not his teaching, not his power, not a law, not "something" of God.

Outline of the Message

1. Twenty Years with Laban, a Foretaste of the Exodus

Jacob stayed twenty years with his uncle. Seven years to marry Rachel, then seven more because he had been given Leah.
Laban then allows him to be paid in livestock, but he changes Jacob's wages as soon as Jacob's flocks grow: ten times, says the text. The pastor sums it up: "Laban is a crafty man." Yet God blesses Jacob, and his possessions multiply.
Laban's sons then accuse him of taking everything that belonged to their father. The Laban who had welcomed him with open arms now openly shows a cold and hostile attitude. Jacob is oppressed.
It is at this moment that the LORD speaks to him directly: "Return to the land of your fathers, and to your relatives, and I will be with you." Leah and Rachel agree: their father has sold them and has eaten up their money. Jacob leaves while Laban has gone to shear his sheep.
The pattern is the same as in the Exodus. Jacob took refuge with Laban, was welcomed, then mistreated. He groans, and God urges him to leave.
The twelve tribes of Israel flee famine for Egypt. Thanks to Joseph, they are first received well. Over four hundred years they multiply, the Egyptians become afraid and mistreat them. The LORD hears their groaning and brings them out of the land of slavery.
The pastor applies this story to our lives. We naturally look for visible security. In exchange for that peace, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that we are precious beings, created in the image of God. We do not dare to upset the framework that keeps us alive, and little by little we sense that we are dying inside.
Behind this hides a divided heart, which says it counts on God while clinging to something else. Man cannot resist this force alone. That is why God himself must accomplish the Exodus.
"You do not need to be able to explain it." When suffering can no longer find words and only groans remain, God stands beside us, knows everything and delivers. The cross of Jesus destroyed death, the wages of sin, and frees us from everything that holds us captive.

2. Rachel Hides the Idols

At the moment of departure, the text notes a regrettable detail: Rachel steals her father's teraphim, the household gods, and carries them off in secret.
Three days later, Laban discovers the escape, catches up with Jacob and asks why he stole his gods. Jacob, who knows nothing about it, pronounces a curse: whoever is found with your gods shall not live.
Rachel hides the idols under her camel's saddle, sits on them and excuses herself from rising by saying she is having her period. For the pastor, the image says everything about the powerlessness of idols: placed under a human being's backside, they can do nothing.
Why did she take them? These household gods were supposed to guarantee the family inheritance. The two sisters had just said they no longer had any share in their father's house. Rachel may nonetheless have sought in her father's inheritance a guarantee for her life.
Jacob, the head of the family, breaks publicly with the idols. But in Rachel's personal tent, in her private space, they remain. They are the survival techniques handed down from generation to generation, human wisdom and human laws. "Human beings say they follow the Lord while keeping their idols hidden inside."

3. The Idols of Christians

"Perhaps you think idols have nothing to do with Christians?" The second commandment, "You shall not make for yourselves an idol," was not given to people who did not know God. It was given to the people God had just saved. It describes the error into which those who have been delivered fall.
Deciding for ourselves "God is like this," starting from our own ways of thinking, is to lock the Lord into an image, the one we make of him. This image can come from common sense. The pastor does not reject it, it is very important, but it becomes an idol when applied to God.
It can also come from our parents' faith. We hear that they prayed fervently every morning at dawn, and the daily morning prayer becomes a means of earning blessing. It takes the place of God.
"Trusting God and depending on the power he gives are two totally different things." The danger is real: following the God who set us free while hiding, in our inner space, an image of God made by us. We use it to obtain strength or success, we consult it to know whether to go right or left, to the point of an almost neurotic faith.
This image is no better than the idols under Rachel's saddle. God is not small enough to fit into my understanding. When you pray or read the Bible, look at the God who is before you as greater, deeper and closer than what you already know of him.
The pastor quotes Lamentations 3:23, read at the start of the service: his faithfulness is renewed every morning, it is so deep. The truest image of God is today's, and it does not come from us, it is given by God.

4. A Story That Repeats Itself

Seeking the Lord without managing to break with one's idols: this human reality runs through the whole Bible.
After the Exodus, the people enter the promised land. Joshua and Caleb rise up as leaders, and everyone goes off to battle. But in private tents, idols are kept hidden. "Exactly what Rachel did." Baal and Ashtoreth will threaten Israel's peace for a long time.
Under the kings of Judah, Josiah and Hezekiah lead reforms to destroy the idols. Yet the text repeats that the high places were not removed.
Then comes the exile in Babylon. Taught by suffering, the Jews abandon idols. But a new idol is born: legalism. Locking God's word into human laws, rules and understanding is still carving an image of God.
The New Testament does not escape this. The apostle Peter sees the gospel reach the Gentiles and finds himself freed from legalism. Then, to spare the supporters of circumcision, he goes back to it, as the letter to the Galatians recounts (Galatians 2).

5. Legalism Can Do Nothing Against Idols

How do we get rid of our idols? The account shows that legalism is powerless here.
Facing the crafty Laban, Jacob asserts his rights: you broke your word, and I endured the heat of summer and the cold of winter to serve you with all my heart. Following on from this sense of justice, he declares that whoever hides the idols will not live. The pastor sees in this the sin of legalism, which judges people.
The most frightening part is that this human curse can come true. Rachel dies young. Having finally given up the idols as they go up to Bethel, the house of God, she dies giving birth to her last son.
In her pain, she names him Ben-Oni, "son of my sorrow." Jacob changes this name and calls him Benjamin, which the pastor translates "son of happiness." The child's identity is replaced.
Rachel is buried on the road to Ephrath. "Did you make the connection?" Jacob's sense of justice, his legalism, condemned and killed the one he loved most. But it is on this very ground, which seems the height of despair and irreparable misfortune, that God will place redemption.

6. From Ephrath to Bethlehem

Saul, the first king of Israel, belongs to the tribe of Benjamin. His son Jonathan bonds with David, who comes from Judah, in a deep friendship. Thanks to this covenant, Mephibosheth, Jonathan's son, eats at King David's table as a member of his family.
The kingdom then divides. Through the bond of love born between Jonathan and David, Benjamin is attached to the kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom is wiped out by Assyria. Benjamin, who should have suffered the same fate, even survives the Babylonian exile.
The Savior Jesus is born, a descendant of David, in Bethlehem Ephrathah. For about nineteen hundred years, God carried Rachel's sorrow, and he chose this place for the birth of Jesus.
The pastor admits that Matthew 2 puzzled him for a long time. At the massacre of the children ordered by Herod, Matthew writes: "Rachel weeping for her children; and she would not be comforted, because they are no more" (Matthew 2:18). In Jesus' time, then, Ephrath clearly still carried the memory of Rachel's sorrow.
Human justice exposes hidden sin and condemns. Those who commit mass killings today all, the pastor notes, brandish their own justice like an idol. Rachel received this curse and was buried at Ephrath. But her son of sorrow became a son of happiness.
"This is the great purpose of the gospel of Jesus." An identity that passes from suffering to happiness, at Bethlehem, the place of sorrow. The Savior is born at the place of your deepest wound. Jesus did not hide his life: he gave it without reserve, he gave everything. Human justice produces the curse, while God's justice shows itself at the cross, full of compassion for humanity.

7. Sanctification: Looking to the One Who Redeemed Us

We are already freed from the slavery of sin. Walking in sanctification therefore does not consist in asking God to eradicate, one by one, the sins that trouble us.
The pastor speaks of himself: "I suffered from this for a long time. The more I hid, the more I tried to get out of it, the more I was a prisoner of the idea that this sin dominated me. I became truly hysterical."
At the end of each day, he prayed like this: "Lord, today I committed this sin. It comes from such and such a weakness, it works in such and such a way. Keep me so that I no longer go to those places. Act in me by your power, change me." Yet the history of Israel shows that, in the end, man is incapable of this.
It is easy to say we will avoid idols once we enter the promised land, or to justify ourselves by saying we have broken with Japanese religions. But sins hidden deep in the heart become idols and end up dominating us. It is not we, it is Jesus who freed us from them, including from those sins.
The solution comes from God. Sanctification is turning our eyes to this fact: I have been redeemed by Jesus, I belong to the Lord. Repentance consists in turning our eyes away from our sin to look to Jesus who saves and frees, aligning our heart there and exercising our faith there.
To belong to Jesus is to be united to our King by his love, as Benjamin was attached to the line of King David by love. "This does not come from us." Jesus called us his friends and gave his life for his friends (John 15:13-15). Through this love, we are received as God's family, at his table.

Key Takeaways

We can break publicly with idols and keep them hidden in our tent, like Rachel.
Locking God into the image we have of him, even from common sense or our parents' faith, is making ourselves an idol.
Legalism does not free us from idols: it becomes one, and it condemns.
At Ephrath, God changed the son of sorrow into a son of happiness; at Bethlehem, Jesus is born at the very place of our wounds.
Sanctification consists in looking to Jesus who redeemed us, rather than fixing our eyes on our sins.

Personal Application

What visible security do you keep "in your tent," in addition to your trust in God?
What image of God have you made for yourself, and how does it limit your prayer?
Are you using a spiritual practice as a way to obtain blessing?
In your struggle against a sin, are you looking more at that sin or at Jesus who redeemed you?
What deep wound can you bring to the Savior, as Ephrath became Bethlehem?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Rachel steal her father's idols in Genesis 31?

According to the pastor, these household gods were supposed to guarantee the family inheritance. Rachel and Leah had just said, however, that they no longer had any share in their father's house. Rachel may nonetheless have sought in this inheritance a guarantee for her life. Jacob publicly leaves the idols behind, but they remain hidden in Rachel's private tent.

Can Christians still have idols?

Yes. The pastor recalls that the prohibition against making idols and images was given to the people God had just saved from Egypt. Deciding for ourselves who God is, starting from common sense or our parents' habits of faith, amounts to locking him into an image. Legalism, which locks God's word into human rules, is also an idol.

What is sanctification according to this message on Genesis 31?

It is not asking God to eradicate, one by one, the sins that trouble us. The more we hide our sin and try to get out of it, the more we remain prisoners of its domination. Sanctification consists in turning our eyes away from our sin to fix them on a fact: Jesus has redeemed us, we belong to the Lord. That is where we align our heart and exercise our faith.