Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #23 of Genesis 30, and we will read Genesis 30:34-38:

And Laban said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy word. And he removed that day the he goats that were ringstraked and spotted, and all the she goats that were speckled and spotted, and every one that had some white in it, and all the brown among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons. And he set three days' journey betwixt himself and Jacob: and Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks. And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.

I will stop reading there.   In our last study, we discussed that the sheep matching the particular characteristics that were described by Jacob were removed.  And Jacob said he would remove them, but Laban is the one who did it by having his sons remove them.  That is, Laban took over a flock that had the same characteristics as the flock that would later develop for Jacob, and it makes sense according to the deal because Jacob will work for the next six years.  He is not working for anything in the past, and the sheep and cattle that had these characteristics had come earlier, so they were removed, and Jacob started fresh.  Now if any sheep or goats are conceived and born that match the characteristics for this deal, then they would belong to Jacob.  It sounded reasonable, and both men agreed to the deal, and then Laban took control over that flock.

As I said previously, Laban is a type of Satan here.  He is similar to Pharaoh because Pharaoh oppressed and afflicted the Israelites, and would not let them go.  And Laban, to some degree, did oppress and afflict his son-in-law, and he did not want him to go, even after Jacob said, “Let me go.”  Then he and Laban made this arrangement.

And we know from Revelation 13 that Satan did overcome the camp of the saints, as we read in Revelation 13:6-7:

And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

I think we all get the picture.  In John 8, Jesus is speaking to the Jews, in John 8:41-44:

Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Jesus said, “Ye are of your father the devil.”  And Laban is a type of the devil and, therefore, his sons are a representation of men – those pastors and elders and deacons that rose up in authority within the churches and congregations – that were never truly saved.  If they were saved, their Father would be God, but they were not saved, so the devil remained their father.  They are in their sins, and they are in captivity to sin and to Satan, and they believed the lie over the truth.  And it was into their hands that the sheep were given, as God turned over the churches into the hands of Satan, and these (men) are emissaries of Satan, as we read in 2Corinthians 11:13-15:

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

These are the ones whose father is the devil, and God makes numerous references to them in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.  We will look at one more.  It says in Jeremiah 23:1-2:

Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith JEHOVAH. Therefore thus saith JEHOVAH God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith JEHOVAH.

The sheep were the people of God.  They were part of the outward representation of God’s kingdom on the earth, but then they were turned over.  Remember, this was Jacob’s plan.  It was Jacob’s contract.  He is the one who set it up, in Genesis 30:31:

And he said, What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shalt not give me any thing: if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock: I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such shall be my hire.

Then it says of Laban, in Genesis 30:34-35:

And Laban said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy word. And he removed that day the he goats that were ringstraked and spotted…

It is just as it was according to the plan and will of God to turn the churches over to Satan for their destruction and judgment at the time of the end, and it was God’s doing.  It was the judgment of God according to the will of God, but who carried it out?  Satan carried it out.  When the Lord loosed him, he immediately entered into the midst of the corporate church as the man of sin, showing himself that he was God.  He immediately went about to wreak spiritual havoc on the congregations.  God was the one behind it, but Satan was His destroying weapon that did destroy the churches.

And, here, too, Jacob had the plan, and Laban carried it out by taking the flock and turning it over into the hands of his sons.  Then it says in Genesis 30:36:

And he set three days' journey betwixt himself and Jacob: and Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks.

Now this is something we have to address.  If the flock being turned over to Laban and his sons is a picture of those in the congregations and the judgment that began at the house of God (and I think it is), then who is represented by these other flocks?  Why are they said to be Laban’s flocks, if Laban is a type of Satan?  If that earlier flock represents the corporate church at the end of the church age, then this later flock or the last flock that Jacob will keep has to represent the people of God, although within that flock there will still be sheep and cattle that will not be Jacob’s.  According to the deal, only the animals that matched the specific description would belong to Jacob, according to what he had predetermined.  (And we discussed how that has to do with God’s predestination or election program.)  But there will be other cattle that will not have those characteristics, and they will belong to Laban. 

How are we to understand this?  Actually, it is not that difficult to understand when we look at God’s end-time plan to send forth the Gospel outside of the churches to the nations of the world with the Latter Rain.  And who do the nations of the world belong to?  They belonged to Satan.  If you recall, Satan is called “the prince of this world” several times, and one of these places is John 6:11: “ Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.”  A prince is a ruler.  At the time of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, we read in Luke 4:3:

And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.

Here, Satan was not lying.  It was delivered to him back in the Garden of Eden when he deceived Adam and Eve, and they ate of the tree they were commanded not to eat of, and Satan won, by right of conquest, their servitude.  They became servants to him, and the Bible tells us in 2Timothy 2 that man has been taken captive by Satan at his will.  It is just like animals that are branded and belong to their owner.  They are basically in captivity.  They are not free to roam and do as they please.  They have some grazing range, but they have to come back.  They have to follow their shepherd and do as he would have them to do.

And that is the case with the flock that Jacob is going to watch over.  It belonged to Laban.  When the Lord began to send the Latter Rain (the Gospel that went forth outside of the corporate church), the Holy Spirit was working with the Word, covering the earth.  It was blanketing the earth through the electronic medium.  There was Scripture reading and faithful Bible teaching, and there were people of God going forth with tracts all over the place.  And there were billboards directing people to the truth (of coming judgment), and it was all reaching Satan’s congregation – not in the churches, but it was reaching Satan’s people outside the churches that were in captivity to sin and to Satan.  They belonged to Satan in their unsaved condition.  They had not yet been translated out of the kingdom of Satan and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.  That is what is actually going to be in view when we read of Jacob doing this very strange thing, as he took rods and put them before the eyes of the cattle when they would go to drink.  I hope you and I will be able to see clearly that this has to do with the Word of God, the Gospel, which caused certain ones to begin to have those characteristics.  They conceived and brought forth offspring that identify with those described in the deal that Jacob made with Laban.  It is God’s salvation program, and it will turn out to be a great multitude of cattle.  And the sons of Laban will later say that Jacob has stolen all that was their father’s, and then Laban’s countenance will change, and he will come against Jacob (he was leaning in that direction before Jacob fled).

Now let us read the next part of Genesis 30, in Genesis 30:37-43:

And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle. And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods. But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's. And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses.

That brings us to the end of the chapter.  Now we want to try to understand this, and I think we have the basic framework, spiritually, regarding what is going on.  Historically, it is strange, but we know when we look at the next chapter why Jacob did this.  It was a response to a dream he had that came from God, and God revealed to him the type of cattle that would belong to him, and that is why he specified these certain ones when striking the deal with his father-in-law Laban. 

Again, that would fit in with God’s election program.  You know, this was predetermined before these cattle were conceived.  In other words, it was not as though there were all those cattle, and they made a deal for one to take this group, and the other to take that group: “I will take the stronger, and you take the feebler.”  No – it was predetermined or predestined that those having the specific markings as described would be Jacob’s, just as God predestinated certain individuals He selected.  It was not man, of course.  It was of God that it was determined.  “This one I love (Jacob I have loved), and this one I hate (Esau have I hated).”  Then God did that with a vast number, perhaps as many as 200 million people, and their names were recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life, according to the language of the Bible.  It is not an actual book – we should not think that.  It is not on physical paper, bound in a book.  It is in the infinite mind of God who never forgets, so it is incredibly more safe and secure, and it is really written in the “blood of Christ,” and it cannot ever be changed, altered, or forgotten, because God does none of those things, let alone with the mercy and grace He had determined to bestow upon these certain ones He has chosen.

We will also find in the next chapter that if Laban had said he wanted the other cattle, then whatever ones Jacob was left with would have been the ones that God multiplied and gave to Jacob.  So it was not in the cattle themselves – there was nothing different or special about them.  It was just a matter of God’s decision in choosing one over the other, just as it was in His salvation program.

Well, let us get started and understand what we can.  Again, Jacob did this because of a dream, and he did not have any impact on the conception of the cattle, or in the fact that some would have these markings and others would not.  At least I do not think so, because God did not tell Jacob to do this.  It was something he did for whatever reason, but in his doing it, God is definitely painting a spiritual picture that reveals the truth of the Gospel.

Again, it said in Genesis 30:37:

And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree…

So there were different trees mentioned, and rods were taken of them.  Then it says in Genesis 30:37:

… and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.

The word “rods” is Strong’s #4731, and it is found 18 times in the Bible in the Old Testament, and six of those times are here in this passage from verses 37 through 43.  So one third of the time that this word is used, it is used here, and it is a word that is also translated as “staff.”  It is translated that way in Genesis 32, in speaking of Jacob, in Genesis 32:10:

I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands.

So “staff” is the same word translated as “rods.”  We will find it is also translated that way in a few other places, like Exodus 12:11:

And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the JEHOVAH'S passover.

Another place it is found is in Hosea 4:12:

My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.

Their “staff” declared unto them.  But first, they asked “counsel at their stocks,” referring to their idols and high places, and then “their staff declareth unto them.”  That would be like going to God, except they went to their idols.  When you go to God, you learn the Word of God, and then declare it.  The “staff” is in the position of that which speaks and declares, so we wonder if it is possible that the “staff” has to do with the Word of God.  But we will have to look more at this when we get together in our next study.  Please join us when we get together for our next study in the book of Genesis.