Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #9 of Genesis, chapter 29, and we are continuing to read Genesis 29:13-20:

And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these things. And Laban said to him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him the space of a month. And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought? tell me, what shall thy wages be? And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured. And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter. And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man: abide with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.

We will stop there. We are continuing to look at Laban, as he is featured in this passage, and he will also be featured in this chapter, as well as in chapters to come, and we are trying to get a better understanding of who he represents. 

We were looking at his name because the name “Laban” is Strong’s #3837, and it is identical to the next word in the concordance, Strong’s #3836, and it is really a transliteration of the Hebrew word pronounced as “laban,” and that is the word we saw in 16:31 Ecclesiastes 19:8, translated as “white.” It was in the context of that which is positive, pointing to the holiness, pureness, and righteousness that the Gospel of God’s salvation brings to the sinner. 

Then we went to the New Testament and spent some time in Revelation, looking at the great multitude in Revelation 7 and also at the seven messengers that came out of the temple (the church) in Revelation 15, and they were clothed in pure and fine white linen. We saw in Revelation 19 where the bride had made herself ready, and then we read in verse 8 that she was “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.”That is one of the reasons that the traditional bridal gown worn by many is taken from this image in the Bible of the bride dressed in beautiful white. And, of course, it is pointing to the beautiful marriage of Christ to His church, the eternal church consisting only of those that are born again, having their sins washed away. That was Strong’s #3836. We will come back to this when we look at some of the negative aspects of this word for “laban” that we find in Leviticus, and having to do with leprosy.

But for now, we are going to go to another word, “Strong’s #3835. If you have a concordance, you can check out these three words: 1) the word for “laban,” which is #3837; the word for “white,” which is #3836; and 3) #3835, which is extremely close. The latter has the same consonants, but it has slightly different vowel pointing in one vowel, and the other vowel is the same. So it is basically the same word because the vowel pointing was added later. and they are not divinely inspired. They were not God-breathed. So the consonants in the Hebrew are the Word of God, so it is the same word as the word for “laban.” This word is found in places like Psalm 51:7:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

This would go along with the idea of what we read in Revelation 7 concerning the great multitude, and the statement was made in Revelation 7:14:

And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Literally, of course, if you were to wash robes in blood, they would not be made “white.” They would be stained with the color of blood and would be “reddish.” But, spiritually, it makes perfect sense, because the blood is pointing to the life of Christ, as it says in Leviticus 17:11: “for the life…is in the blood.” The Lord Jesus shed His blood, meaning that He gave His life. He made payment for sin, as the wages of sin is death, and He died on behalf of His people so they would not have to die for their sins. In paying the penalty, which is really the definition of the atonement, and offering up Himself as the sacrificial Lamb of God, Christ shed His blood and paid for all the sins of the elect which He took upon Himself and made the payment for, and all that sin was removed from them. It was taken away, as far as God is concerned, including every sin in that person’s life from the time of conception (we are conceived in sin), and from the time of birth (we are born speaking lies), and from the time of childhood through the teenage years, young adulthood, middle age, and old age. It includes all the days of our lives, from the moment we became a human being conceived in the mother’s womb until the day we die, whatever amount of sin was committed, no matter what enormous amount of sin had been committed in thought, word and deed, even deep down in the soul. For example, a baby cannot literally speak lies, so the “dialogue” must emanate right from the soul where there is rebellion against God. Whatever sin a man is guilty of (and there is a multitude of iniquity), it is all paid for. It is like a beautiful river of the blood of Christ as it flowed out of His pierced side, and a beautiful river of the Gospel water that also flowed out of His pierced side, and it washes it away, leaving that individual spotless, pure, holy, clean and just in God’s sight.

This is why the accusations of the “accuser of the brethren,” who is Satan, never meant anything. When people point the finger at someone like Mr. Camping and they say, “Oh, he did this and said that,” and they try to lay some iniquity or guilt upon such an elect child of God, it means nothing. It means nothing because there is “no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” The question is asked in Romans 8:33: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?” And the answer is, “No one can!” We are free from bondage to the Law and sin. We are free from the Law’s condemnation. The Law has nothing further against us. Yes – if we became saved ten years ago, and we happen to sin today or tomorrow, we will feel badly. A true, elect child of God will feel bad. There will be a horrible feeling in our soul, and we will wince and wonder, like David in Psalm 51, “How could I have done such a thing? Is it possible I am not saved?” There could be all kinds of troubling of mind that sin brings, but that has nothing to do with the question, “Is my sin still upon me, or has it been paid for?” 

It happened with David, and it will happen in the life of everyone who has truly been born again and truly has had their sins forgiven. Whether that day, or the next day, we will wake up and pray, “O, God, help me not to do that again. Help me. Turn me. Strengthen me so I do not do that again, and may I live obediently today, and may I live to your glory? Help me to put that (sin) behind me.” And that is what we do. We press forward to the things before us, and we forget those things which are behind. If there is any nagging guilt, what we do is to read the Bible, and we see in the Bible that we are living in a time when God’s salvation program has been completed. “Therefore, if that sin I committed is upon me today and I am guilty, and if payment must be made for it, then it is not just this sin, but all the millions of past sins I have done, and all those sins I will commit tomorrow and until I die. And all those sins are upon me, and there is no removing of them any longer. But if I did become saved (and we are living in a time when God has saved everyone he intended to save and there is no more salvation), then if I am one of those blessed individuals that is saved by the grace of God through the faith of Christ and my sins have been washed away, then let me not waste another second being troubled by this past sin or feeling guilty. I have no need to further atone. I have no need to further make payment for that sin, because payment has been made by the Lord Jesus Christ in full.” 

Continuing to waste time feeling sorry for ourselves in our guilt is nothing but a waste of time, and time that could better be used doing service to God. So let us forget those things which are behind and get to work, and not allow sin to be an excuse to distract from our duty and responsibility to offer up our bodies a living sacrifice to the Lord Jesus Christ today, and to see to do His will through the power of His Spirit within us, moving to will and to do of His good pleasure. 

Well, David was moved by God to write Psalm 51:7:

Purge me with hyssop…

And, again, I think it is a good figure, as the Word of God is the “applicator,” the hyssop that is dipped in the basin of blood and applied to the doorpost so the Destroyer would pass by or pass over. God applied the blood of Christ to His elect through the hearing of the Word of God. Again, it says in Psalm 51:7:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

The word “whiter” is that word closely related to “laban,” and it fits in with #3836 and the other Scriptures we looked at, or we could go to Isaiah 1:18:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith JEHOVAH: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Of course, again, we have to point something out. I would be happy if it were not true because I would want it not to be true (in my love for certain ones), but it is true that God has ceased His salvation program as far as ongoing salvation. Everyone that was to be saved has been saved, and everyone that was to be made white has been made white. They are white, and they are clean and pure from all iniquity. Their sins have been removed from them, as that wonderful statement in the Psalms declares, “as far as the east is from the west.” And , you know, the east and west can never meet. If you are in the east and you head west, the two will never meet. So, too, our sins are gone from us. 

Let us go to Micah 7:18-20:

Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.

“Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” The sea represents “hell” or eternal death, and the picture is really of the Lord Jesus being cast into “hell,” bearing our sins. It is just like when Jonah the prophet was thrown overboard, and the whale swallowed him. The Lord Jesus made the tie-in: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” And if you read Jonah 2, while Jonah was in the belly of the whale, he speaks of being in hell. So Christ went into hell, because hell is “death and grave,” and when Christ died at the point of the foundation of the world, He went to the grave or hell, and then He came up out of hell, as Jonah was vomited out of the whale’s belly onto dry ground. So, too, the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, that glorious truth that the Bible declares, and which we are reminded of every year at Easter, the day of the resurrection, as Christ rose from the dead in 33 A. D. to demonstrate and to show everyone that this is what He did at the foundation of the world before He created everything. Jesus, in rising up out of the grave or hell, came up from the dead and was declared to be the Son of God. Was there sin upon Him at that point? No, of course not. There is no possible way He could have had sin upon Him. Was there any sin upon Him of any kind? Did he just pay for trillions and trillions of sins for, let us say, the 200 million of those He had saved? Did He just pay for an enormous amount of sin, but maybe there was still some sin upon Him? No – it was “all or nothing.” He paid for it all, and now God has cast all those sins into the depths of the sea. All means “all,” every single one of them. All is paid for regarding the sins of His people, and it was paid for with an enormous price, if we are a child of God. And we have to ask that question because so many are deceived on that point, but if we are truly a child of God, then all of our sins were cast upon Jesus, and He paid for them. It is all paid for, and He purchased us in that transaction. He bought us with the price of His own life as He shed the blood that covered our sin and washed us, equipping us with “white robes” or “the fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints.” That is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has made us His own, and we are no longer our own lords; we never were, but we were deceived into thinking we were “free agents” and able to do our own thing, but we were always servants to sin and to Satan. Now we are servants to Christ and instead of going from unrighteous act to unrighteous act, we are to do righteous act unto righteous act by keeping His commandments. That should be the desire and focus of our lives this day – not tomorrow, but today – because “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Today is all we have to deal with, and on this day, in every one of God’s elect people there should be an ongoing desire to do the will of God. And the will of God is laid out on the pages of the Bible: “Here is what you do to live to the glory of God today. Keep my commandments.” So we pray for wisdom and guidance, and we study the Bible, and the more we study, the more we learn, and the more we are guided in how to live our life in practically every area. I do not think there is an area that is not covered, but the Word of God directs the course of our steps, day by day.

This word, Strong’s #3835, is always found a couple of times in Daniel. It says in Daniel 11:35:

And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make themwhite, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed.

Then it says in Daniel 12:9-10:

And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.

There is the great multitude at the time of the end, which was practically simultaneous with God unsealing the Bible. God unsealed the Bible in 1988, but it was not until 1994 that He began to save the great multitude with the Latter Rain, so they are very closely linked together. There was the unsealing of the Word of God, and then there is the statement that, “Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried.” Judgment Day began at the house of God, so it has been Judgment Day for a long time now, since 1988 (the end of the church age) and officially in 1994, and Judgment Day is a time of severe trying and testing. We have seen that, and the two go together – the trying of His people and the opening of the Scriptures, because every new doctrine that comes forth from the Bible has been a testing program. Are you going to hold on to your traditions and your church’s position regarding what their confessions and creeds say, over and above what the Word of God, the Bible, says? So it has been a testing ground, and many have failed the test on this doctrine or that doctrine. So it all goes together: the opening of the Scriptures, the salvation of the great multitude and their being purified and made white while also being tried. So it continues, and it will continue right up until that last day, as this is the time when God is trying everyone to see what we are made of, whether it be “wood, hay, stubble,” or “gold, silver, precious stones.”