Failing Forward - WK 6 - Failure to Know and be Known; Part 1: Unknown - Audio
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Today, we're continuing our series "Failing Forward." Today, we're talking about being known and being unknown. And today, I'd like to start out with another story from the Bible. It's the story of two sisters. It's really we're focusing on one. Their names are Leah and Rachel. And Leah and Rachel ended up married to the same guy back in the Old Testament. They thought it was a good idea to have multiple lives. That turned out to not be a great idea for a lot of reasons. And we're going to see one of them today. And it's because Leah gets married. Her sister's also married. But Leah, she's not super attractive in the world's eyes. And so her husband, Jacob, is kind of like not that into her. In fact, he really only truly loves her sister, Rachel, who we're told is really good looking. And as a result, Leah spends almost her whole life feeling completely overlooked, completely unknown. And I want to share with you one of those profound texts about her experience. It's in Genesis 29. And it goes like this. When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb. But her sister Rachel was unable to have children. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Ruben. Because she said, the Lord saw my harsh treatment. Ruben means seen in Hebrew. Seen. But then-- but so she says that, right? She says, the Lord has seen my harsh treatment. Now my husband will love me. What's left in between these verses is that he didn't. She became pregnant again and gave birth to a son. She said, the Lord heard that I was unloved. So he gave me this son too. She named him Simeon, Simeon's Hebrew for heard. She thought, God has heard me. Now my husband will too. But he didn't. She became pregnant again and gave birth to a son. She said, now this time, my husband will embrace me. The Hebrew word there can mean a lot of things. It can mean to make love. It can also mean to connect, to be deeply connected to somebody. So the translators use embrace as kind of like a middle ground way of describing what she's hoping for. She's hoping that she won't just get pregnant with her husband.
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Coast Bible Church, PastorTom Bennett, San Juan Capistrano, CA, www.coastbible.org