Jealously

DEVOTION

GENESIS

JEALOUSLY

Gen 30:1-8

30:1 When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, "Give me children, or I'll die!" 2 Jacob became angry with her and said, "Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?" 3 Then she said, "Here is Bilhah, my maidservant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and that through her I too can build a family." 4 So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her, 5 and she became pregnant and bore him a son. 6 Then Rachel said, "God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son." Because of this she named him Dan.   7 Rachel's servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. 8 Then Rachel said, "I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won." So she named him Naphtali.  

NIV

Clearly jealously motivates bad behavior. We see Rachel being jealous of Leah because she has given Jacob four sons and she has not even given him one. We can just hear her screaming at Jacob about this matter. “Give me children, or I’ll die!” This demanding he do something about what he has no control over angers him and he makes a very profound statement. “Am I in the place of God, who kept you from having children?” There are situations in life we just do not have any control over, period. It would seem that is not good enough for some of us. We want control over our own lives, we want to make the decisions about what happens. Rachel surely wanted what she wanted and she wanted it now or else she would simply die. This lack of control of her situation brought her to the point of jealously, which lead to anger and then despondency and even depression, wishing death upon herself. But Jacob reminds her, it is not in either of their control for God has the situation in hand. It is God who has control, not him nor her. That is just not good enough for her, so she gives him her maidservant to be a wife to him, so he can give her a son. What a man. He just finished telling her God was in control of the situation, but, “Oh you want be to be intimate with another woman, your maidservant, well ok then, we will take control of the situation” Did he just forget about the fact God was in control? Well maybe out of love for Rachel and understanding her state of mind, he just consented to take Bilhah as a wife. She did bear him a son, so Rachel was now happy, content, vindicated. But wait Jacob kept up this behavior with Bilhah and she bore him a second son. But Rachel did not get upset with this but rather considered herself the winner in this struggle with Leah about having sons for Jacob. There is so much here we can learn. First that jealously motivates bad behavior. We need to guard against such thinking, as it takes God out of the equation of life. Just as Jacob stated, are we in the position of God? When we find ourselves in a position of having less then another, is it because of the human condition or is it because of God? Yes, there are people who achieve greatness, and produce an abundance of fame and fortune. There are people who live in near poverty and there are those who live somewhere in between. If we look just with human eyes we could either get proud or jealous. But we must always see with the eyes of God. Each person no matter their situation in life, are his creation and are in need of a personal relationship with him. God has us exactly where we are supposed to be. He leads us, guides us in our daily walk through life, and brings us to where he can use us for his purpose. Just as with Rachel, when we take the situation into our own hands, it may not be the best for us. We will see that Leah reacts poorly to what Rachel has done. Although ultimately Jacob has the twelve sons he does, the twelve tribes of Israel, it seems it is because of another dysfunctional family having a feud over sons. We need to see God at work and submit to his authority in our lives. We cannot afford to allow the blessings of others to influence our thoughts and thus our behaviors. None of us are in the position of God. Maybe some of those who have more than us have it due to the blessings of God, or because they have taken their lives into their own hands. Either way, we have to know God has our life in his hands and he knows the best for us. If we counsel with him, we can be assured we are in the best place we could be. Our lives are not ours, they are his. Rachel should have known that, and instead of giving Bilhah to Jacob, she should have asked God to open her womb, and if he did not then she should have accepted the will of God for her life. But she was not willing to do that, she moved ahead of God. It is not a matter of resigning to our situation in life, it is a matter of praising God in all situations in life. Things may have turned out the same as far as Jacob having twelve sons, but had Rachel praised God for her sister giving those four sons to Jacob, their lives would have been far better as a family. Praise is always better than jealously.