A church visit: the 'integrity' sermon on Genesis 30-31
A host recounts visiting another church, where the sermon - titled 'Integrity' - was preached from Genesis 30-31, Jacob's dealings with Laban. The verdict: right conclusion, wrong scripture. Jacob the trickster manipulates the speckled-sheep deal with divination-like almond branches and slips away in the middle of the night; he is no model of integrity, though God keeps his promises through him anyway. The takeaway: don't turn the Old Testament into a rule book - it is a collection of stories revealing God and people, and hunting every passage for a tangible to-do will drag meanings out of the text that aren't there. Includes the Noah's-vineyard joke and the line 'wrong scripture, right outcomes'.
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