Know where your faith is going !

Thursday July 8, 2021

Know where your faith is going !

“Take away the foreign gods that are in your midst, purify yourselves.” Genesis 35.2

The Bible does not only recount the glorious and generous acts of the heroes who fill its pages. She also offers us portraits of unfriendly men and women. Laban, in Genesis, is really a deceitful character and if Jacob, who has been around him for a long time, is often presented as “deceitful”, Laban deserves the same adjective. Abraham sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find there a wife for Isaac, his son. When the servant meets Rebecca, he discerns in her the ideal wife and immediately offers her some jewelry. When Rebecca returns home so adorned, her brother Laban hastens to meet the servant. “He had seen the rings and bracelets in his sister's hands.” So the Bible gives a clue as to the character of man. The rest of the story is the same. A generation later, Laban exploits his nephew Jacob, repeatedly cheats on him, changes his salary several times to earn more. When Jacob leaves his uncle and takes his two wives, Leah and Rachel (daughters of Laban), the latter lament : “Do we still have a share and an inheritance with our father ? Are we not considered by him as strangers, since he sold us and even ate our money ?” (Genesis 31.14,15). Greedy for money, Laban chose his god. Yet he witnessed the actions of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He even heard Him directly order him not to torment his son-in-law any longer. But, like many of our contemporaries, he juggles between the god of money and that of the Bible. He serves one while knowing the other. Maybe he thinks it is not forbidden to have it both ways. This is where he goes wrong. Jesus is clear about this : “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the first and love the second, or he will cling to the first and despise the second” (Matthew 6:24). You must also distinguish where your faith is going. Jacob, a victim of Laban, knows what he is talking about when he says to the people of his household : “Take away the foreign gods who are in your midst, purify yourselves.”

Source (His Word for Today)