A decade ago, The Jerry Springer Show was a popular TV program featuring dysfunctional people yelling and accusing and threatening and sometimes even physically attacking one another on the studio set.
Producers seemingly looked for the most bizarre toxic relationships that could be put on display in order to attract the most voyeurs of emotional disarray.
There are still shows on TV today with the same format.
It’s crazy and I hope you don’t patronize them.
If Jerry Springer would have been alive 3,800 years ago, he would have loved to have staged a market-square assembly of people to watch him interview a man named Jacob and his wives and his wives’ servants whom he impregnated.
Oh yeah, Jerry would also have wanted to have interviewed Jacob’s scheming father-in-law and his brothers-in-law.
It would have made for a real draw for observers, that’s for sure.
Genesis 30-31:16 provides a glimpse of this messed-up extended family. It’s not a pretty sight by any stretch.
But my advice that you read the passage is not based on it providing a role model for behavior. Instead, I’m wanting you to see that of which I was reminded this morning — God’s grace is amazing.
God was irreversibly committed to His promise to ultimately bless the entire world through Abraham’s offspring — including the eventual descendent who would become the Messiah.
That meant that God held to the promise even through the head-shaking, eyes-closed and breathing-deeply moments when Abraham’s descendants acted in ungodly ways.
It’s easy to look at Genesis 30 and disparage the behavior of Abraham’s grandson and those around him.
But before we start tossing rocks at the story’s characters, let’s remember that we live in glass houses.
We’ve all had The Jerry Springer Show moments somewhere along the way that gave emotional disarray voyeurs an eyeful and/or an earful.
Please join me in thanking God for His amazing grace that saved wretches like us, people who once were blind but now can see.
Pray for the people in your life still entrapped in toxic situations.
Encourage them to consider that path that can lead them from chaos into contentment.
God hasn’t given up on wanting peace for their souls.
And we can’t give up on praying for a softening of their hearts.
As always, I love you
Martin
