Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from Radical.net.

Genesis chapter 31, verses 19 and 20,

Laban had gone to shear his sheep,

and Rachel stole her father's household gods,

and Jacob tricked Laban the Oramian

by not telling him that he intended to flee.

Now the picture here is Jacob, along with his now very prosperous family, leaving Laban.

Laban had in many ways been unjust, unfair, had deceived Jacob for years.

And so God comes to Jacob and says it's time for you to go.

And yet the way in which Jacob goes shows the Jacob we've seen in different parts of Genesis, Jacob the deceiver, as he

tricks Laban, doesn't tell him what he's intending to do, sneaks away. And so we see Jacob doing

what God has told him to do, fleeing injustice in many ways, and yet he's doing it

sinfully. And this is where I just, I read this and I think about our lives, how we must be careful not to respond to evil around us with more evil in us.

Jacob is surrounded by injustice, and yet he works deception, uses deceit and trickery to get out of that injustice.

If we're not careful, we can easily fall into the trap of responding to sin around us with sin in our own

lives.

We've got to be careful.

This is not what God has called us to do.

So yes, God had called Jacob to leave Laban,

but God was not calling Jacob to sin in the way he did that.

So God help us, we pray. We are so prone. God, we're so prone to

respond to sin around us with sin in us. Like when anger rises up in someone around us,

...