Leah

By Odon Bulamba

It’s a joy to be here and I’m going to share with you the Word of God not my words, your words but the Word of God and whoever listens to that Word will never perish.  When you talk about the Word of God most of the time people think it’s just a simple Bible reading and forget that behind that Word is a powerful God, someone bigger than our universe hiding behind that Word.

As a child when I watched scary movies I would scream because of fear.  God’s voice is bigger than the scary noises on scary movies.  Why don’t we fear God speaking and listen carefully?  The Word of God was written many years ago and to understand it God decided to use human beings to write it and translate it.  At the end of the time no one can say, I didn’t hear it or understand it because God will say I sent it to you in English.

Genesis 29:17, we see the daughters of Laban.  Bible says, Leah was tender eyed but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured.  Leah was the older sister of Rachel and both were born from the same mother.  The two girls were descendants of the same parents but in human being’s eyes, people could see a difference.  One had eyes that looked tired/drunk, her eyes reflected ugliness and for people to describe Leah they only took the reference of her eyes. When they talk about Rachel they say she is so beautiful.

How can the same womb produce one beautiful girl and one that looked different?  How can God can use the same father and mother to produce two different things and human beings can notice.  That difference made them unbalanced: one was loved and all favour to her because of her beauty while the other lost favour because of her appearance.  That is not fair.  What did Leah do to be given the weak eyes?  Why did God decide to give those eyes to Leah and Leah lose all the favour?

Have you come across a situation in your life where people look at you and say, “wow, I love you” or where people prefer to be with your sister than you?  Have you felt that people are rejecting you?  Maybe someone else is favoured more than you.  Have you ever felt humiliated because of your appearance and people don’t think you exist? That is the life of Leah.

These two pens in my hand look similar.  One pen represents Leah and the other is Rachel.  Both daughters of Laban but in this pen the ink is different compared to this one.  God made one to be perfect on purpose while the other was different on purpose.  Maybe Rachel didn’t need make-up or even look in the mirror while maybe Leah tried to make herself look better, “Do I look ok today mum?”  “Try again daughter”.  Maybe she tried to use make-up to cover her weak eyes.  By keeping on trying…time kept ticking and moving forward.

Leah was now old.  “What can I do?  My only solution is to pray and cry to God.  I have spots that spoil my beauty but God can help me”.  She prayed and committed her burdens into God’s hands.  “I know that people don’t like me, they treat me lower than my sister regardless of my birth right. They don’t consider me as someone special”.  By praying to God, her age didn’t stop and she found herself older…maybe 30 or 40 years old and no one came close to her and tell her that they love her.

On that day, God looked inside just like we can look inside this pen to see the ink.  God says, “I won’t look at what human beings look at but what human beings don’t see.  I want to see your beauty inside”.  The Bible says that God doesn’t look on our outward appearance but focuses on the inside.  You can do make-up and wear expensive clothes but what He considers most is what is inside you.  People can refuse to give you favour but God doesn’t look at that but what is inside.

God mad you short, fat, slim or ugly or beautiful but God doesn’t focus on that.  The Bible says we should be beautiful on the inside.  Who is the beautician to make our inside beautiful to rearrange my inside to look beautiful?  The Holy Spirit is the only one who can do it and He does it free of charge.  All the tools He uses are painless, you don’t feel pain, they are soft and rearrange them inside you and your beauty doesn’t attract human beings but God.

When Jacob saw Rachel, he cried out and admired her beauty, “wow, I have never seen this”.  Automatically his heart beat faster, “I love you, come and hug me” and he hugged her and in other versions, he kissed her because he saw something pleasant with his eyes.  He gave her that favour to kiss and hug her and automatically decided to marry her.

As you know to express love some people write poems to describe their love to someone.  Others express through their spoken words.  Others through their eyes.  Here, God our Lord, He chose not Rachel but Leah.  “I see your beauty inside you Leah, this is what attracts me and I will be your God, I will be the God of Leah. Leah someone who is humbled every time, someone who is minimised and everyone looks down at and I want to make you someone”.

As I said last time, that at night Laban came to Jacob with a different girl, “This is your wife, it is time now to start to celebrate your marriage”.  That trick, I don’t know how much it affected Leah?  You know that the husband is the fiancé of my sister and now it’s night time and in the next few hours the morning will appear, I will have to explain to him.  What is going to happen? Maybe he will kick me out, call me a liar, how will my sister look at me when she discovers that I took her husband?

What would you say Ange if Debbie your sister took your husband? How will you feel when someone you trust, your older sister who took care of you, to advise you and now she takes your husband?  How is Leah going to manage that? I might say, no God, this is wrong, this is unbelievable, you will just put me in trouble, how can you put me in this situation where everyone will be shocked when they hear this story.

If Ange will take Debbie’s husband, I am sure that Debbie will never believe that Ange or her husband acted in a right way and Ange will feel guilty and the family will be shocked and people will talk badly about Ange.  “What she did, no way, do you know what she did to her sister, it’s unacceptable”.  But for God’s plan, Leah you have to pass by there.  If you were Leah, maybe you would resist, or if you were Laban you might not be able to do that to your daughters.  It would be very hard as a parent because your youngest daughter will hate you for the rest of your life.

God who looks at the inside of human beings, He believes that this husband doesn’t deserve to have Rachel first but Leah.  That is God’s decision, that is His voice.  Jacob, you are not having Rachel or Leah.  Is the choice yours or mine?  How often do we make a choice and put God aside and we don’t care who is God and what He is talking about?  When we choose, how often do we think about God’s plan?  How often do we consider God’s choice is not good?

Our choice is based on our feelings but God chooses what is inside.  Now Leah is in front of Jacob and spent the first night and the story comes out in the morning.  I’m not sure if Leah came out of the bedroom with pride in the morning.  How many people looked badly at Leah from the neighbourhood?  Poor Leah.  She conceived and God was now I have to prove.

God said, I promised that my nation will be built through you.  God of Leah started to act and after nine months, she gave birth.  First son.  All this time Jacob doesn’t love her.  Imagine living with someone who doesn’t love you, imagine sharing the same bed, cooking and washing after them and they don’t love you.  You need patience, perseverance and to push yourself to live with that person.

Jacob was focusing on his 7 years coming to get what he wanted.  Leah you are not what I want and this 7 years will be focused on your sister and not you.  You can imagine the conversation between the two.  After the first son, “behold son” she named him.  “Look”, she was proud to present son to the world.  The world responded, “Shut up, you stole your sister’s husband.  We don’t give you the favour you thought you would get”.

When children are born, the world is happy but not in this case.  She had a second and third sons, up to six.  Half of the tribes of Israel come from her.  That did not let Jacob to love her.  Then she took 2 other children from her servants.  God was trying to defend Leah by giving her more fruit for the humanity to see, “Me God, I am the one giving you the gifts of the Holy Spirit”, but no one wanted them.  No one accepted she had the right to carry those fruit.

Most of the time we don’t know what we carry inside ourselves but want to focus on what people will see and what we can offer e.g. house, money etc.  This is to be kind because I give you material things.  When God gives you spiritual gifts, how do you receive them?  If someone says, I will give you this house, how will you feel?  You will be happy.  When you need a flash car or clothes and you feel happiness to receive them but when God gives you a spiritual gift, how do you welcome that gift? ‘Oh yea, I’m a prophet, I have the gift of intercession,’ and your joy is minimised just like Leah.  My gifts are not good.  The eyes of my gift look awkward, this is not the gift I wanted.

I used to pray 2 hours per day but today I can’t make it, praying is a waste of time.  We start to prove to God that we look down at that beautiful gift that He has given to us.  With joy God says, I will give you this and this to build my nation and half of those 12 tribes to be yours but you tell God, no I don’t need all of this, I just want Jacob (human beings) to love me.  Your gifts don’t impress the world.  We want our children to look like Benjamin who was handsome.

We want to impress human beings.  What is the secret of your life? Who do normally impress, yourself, husband, neighbours, boss or your God?  When it’s time to impress people, who do put as the first on the list?  Sometimes we forget to impress ourselves.  If I have the privilege to read my Bible, why don’t I read it? 

Leah knew the secret, all glory was returned to God first, thank you for this son, this gift and another one and I need more.  The nation you are preparing God, I want to be a part of that nation and I want my descendants to be a part of that.  If they call you today to present only one thing that belongs to Christ, what will it be?  Does your life really belong to God? Our lives, we don’t give them to God, we treat ourselves harshly, we try to impress others but not our souls.

When your soul and heart is crying inside you, how do you make it happy?  My soul, be quiet, God will make it pass. When a child is crying, we will comfort them and hold them and encourage them and build up strength and power in them and they feel motivated.  Our souls need to be cuddled sometimes – repent.  My soul I did something wrong, sorry God, I fix the problem.

My soul and heart has more value than my child.  If I can hold my child, why not my soul?  Your soul is what will go to heaven and therefore it is the only treasure you have, not your body.  How much care do you give to your soul?  I can call my child, my baby.  What do I call my soul?  Most of the time I forget I have a soul.  That soul needs attention.

Leah needs attention and forced people to pay her attention, “look Jacob what I can do for you, 8 children”.  Jacob was not impressed.  I’m inviting you this morning to beautify your soul in order to attract God.  Whenever God looks at you, He can be impressed.  The beauty of your soul needs a place in your life.  Take your soul to the beautician.  This is the time to consider making your soul more attractive.

Our sisters know how to apply make-up.  I see on television a make-up product called Thin Lizzy.  You can see the skin colour changes by using it.  It’s thin according to the name but achieves great things and makes the person more attractive.  Thin Lizzy can cover birth marks and make them disappear.

If human beings can make a product to improve skin, what about the product God gives to our souls.  “Lord, visit my soul, make me more attractive to you and let all my gifts be a part of your nation and produce”.  To be Leah doesn’t mean you are ugly but you are more attractive to God than Rachel and you produce more than others.  Hold onto what God talks about you, don’t hold onto what human beings testify about you and you will become a winner.