Scripture Reference: Genesis 25:26 (AMPC); 2 Corinthians 1, 2; Genesis 29: 10; Genesis 29:10 – 15; Genesis 27:42; Genesis 28:12-15 (AMPC); Genesis 26:1-6,12 (MSG); Genesis 26:12-15 (MSG); Genesis 26:19-24 (MSG); Genesis 26:28- 30 (MSG); Genesis 26:32- 34 (MSG); Genesis 30:25 AMPC; Genesis 31:1; Genesis 31:4; Genesis 31:7-13; (Genesis 31:7-13)
Praise Jesus. Praise You Jesus. Praise You Jesus. Praise You Lord. Praise You Lord. Praise You Lord. Praise You Lord. Hallelujah. Thank You Lord that we have the freedom and the liberty to praise You and worship You and to give the declaration of our heart through our words to You. And I thank You Father that in the rest of this weekend our praises will be sweet to You. The words that are spoken in these meetings Lord, will not be limited to only this audience but it will be a Word that will go far and wide and touch many people, Father. I thank You Lord that hearts are prepared and ears are ready to hear. Our minds are constrained so that we can have focus and we will hear Your Word clearly for us as we get into eating the bread of life, Father. We thank You for it in the Name of Jesus. Everybody said – Amen. Amen. You may be seated. Praise the Lord.
Before I actually I’m going to preach on it, I’m going to just show you something the Lord gave me and I’m going to ask them to put the table on the slide, just for a mere second or two so that they just get a taste of what’s coming after lunch. So, this is Laban’s Syndrome defeat and how to defeat men and systems. And so, the Lord has given me what Laban looks like and how you can be free of Laban and how to behave in another way. Thank you. I think it’s already too much for them; people are taking pictures. You know it’s like, no. So, now I’m going to subvert everything the people did with their pictures and ask if it’s possible for us to do a printout, you know, for everybody so that they can take a picture home with them but you’ll only get it after I’ve preached it. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. I’m ready for the Word. Are you ready for the Word? Hallelujah. I’m going to jump straight into it.
So, I am/have been ministering on ‘The Source and The Future’ for many, many weeks and I wanted to speak about Laban’s Syndrome as a separate message. But the Lord just really begun to deal with me about how Laban Syndrome is very much part of how Jacob was able to walk in his constellation and to have one without the other really doesn’t work. So, I’m still on ‘The Source and The Future’ and I think its Part 11 or whatever it is now. But I just want to,… I’m not going to go through all the characteristics of Laban Syndrome because when I go through the table, although I don’t talk about the characteristics in detail, I give you highlights of what Laban Syndrome looks like. And if you identify with any of Laban Syndrome that is at work in your life or that you may be subject to in your life, then I’m giving you the way, the Word’s way of how to change that. Amen. You should be happy about that, at least. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
So, Laban Syndrome is a spirit working through the personality and choices of humans. So, humans run systems. Even though people may try and tell you that a system is without human intervention, all systems are designed by humans. All systems are ultimately managed by humans and the performance is for the benefit of humans. So, we don’t do systems for the sake of doing systems. So even though you may say, “But a traffic light is a system that humans don’t intervene with.” Well, the system is designed for the benefit of the humans, it was designed by the humans and it is still managed by the humans and although you may not intervene moment by moment, if something goes wrong, just watch how traffic comes to a standstill because it’s for the benefit of humans.
So, Laban Syndrome is about humans, the choices humans make and what they create in the system, and as a system for their advantage and their benefit. The main purpose of which is to control and direct what God has declared over you, so as to prevent you from becoming all of what God has planned for you. Effectively preventing you and others from establishing His Kingdom, His covenant and His Church on the earth. So that’s the whole purpose of Laban Syndrome.
So, as I was meditating on trying to really just put the framework together so that. I, I really want to be able to finish this because I go to America on Tuesday and I’m going to be away for some while. I’ll tell you about that a little bit later. But, God has done amazing, marvellous, miraculous things. Remember last time I told you I went to America, I didn’t know what all was going to happen to me until I was there. Well now things have been already arranged for me and I know about them before I even get there. So, it’s quite a marvellous thing actually – the wonderful things that God is doing. Hallelujah. I’ll just tell you this: That all of the great men of God that witnessed my,… Pastor Sharon and I, that witnessed and were part of our divine covenant connection with Brother Jerry in 1996, I will be eye-balling them face to face and spending time with them face to face on this trip. How about that? If God’s not cool then I don’t know. Praise the Lord.
So, I’m going to go sometimes to the end and then I’m going to go back to the beginning and go to the end so that I can get the puzzle put together before I leave. Amen. Praise Jesus. So, Genesis 25:26 (AMPC), 26 Afterward his brother came forth, and his hand grasped Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob [supplanter]. Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them. 27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a cunning and skilled hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob was a plain and quiet man, dwelling in tents. 28And Isaac loved [and was partial to] Esau, because he ate of Esau’s game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.
So, I’m going to throw in some golden nuggets the Lord has given me as I go along and I’m going to do my best to not get side-tracked by them, okay. As I’ve meditated on this, I’ve wondered why it was that the Bible puts it like this and that it was about food as opposed to about any other part of the relationship; or any other part of the covenant or any other part that God would speak. Remember that Isaac knew that he was the seed that was promised to Abraham; that through Isaac, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Okay? So, when Esau was the first born who had the birth right, who would Isaac see as being the man who would carry on the birth right where all the nations of the earth would be blessed through? Esau. He did not have a revelation that God had chosen Jacob. His wife did but he didn’t.
Pastor Sharon and I were having a conversation about this week and there is no evidence in the Bible that when Rebekah when Rebekah went to seek God on behalf of God. I always get confused between Rachel and Rebekah. So, it’s Rebekah – exactly. It’s Rebekah. When Rebekah went and asked God, you know, “Who is, ….why is there this struggle in my womb?”. And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your stomach and the elder will serve the greater, will serve the, the younger.” She had a revelation by God, a divine revelation, that actually the favour was on Jacob, not on Esau. Isaac was just going with what God had pre-ordained, that the first born would be the one that would carry on the seed.
So, you know, for us to think that Isaac was favouring Esau because it was just about food, he saw Esau’s ability to provide for the future, in his natural strength-skilled and cunning hunter, come on now. This is a nugget, very rare and precious: If we measure the future of people as determined by their ability to create provision for the future and their ability to present themselves as skilled, as smart, as intelligent, as ‘on me’ rests the ability for the future, we may be completely missing what God’s got in order because His order is not about how smart or how cunning or how strong you are, it’s about who He predestined to walk with the anointing. It’s about who He chooses to have the Covenant. And if you don’t hear God speak to you then you only have one other option and that’s to go with a more skilled person. That’s why you’ve got to hear what God says to you, you can’t go with the talented one, you can’t go with the skilled one, you can’t go with the most cunning, smartest one, you’ve got to go with the one that God says. Because in the natural in Isaacs mind, Esau was everything that he could envisage would be the future of the father of many nations: powerful man, strong, cunning, smart, hunter, able to lead many men whereas Jacob wanted to find out more of what his father Abraham was like and ‘what happened to you dad, Isaac, when you were on the alter, tell me again, father Abraham, tell me again how He led you out of a city and a country you didn’t know, tell me again what happened when you got there, tell me again.’
He kept going back to the tents of his father’s, whereas Esau was dependent on himself….’ I’ll go and hunt and I’ll go and show you how skilful I am and let me come and present the best of what I can do for myself and let’s see you turn me down for anything.’ Why do you think Esau actually said, you can have my birth right to Jacob? Because when he measured himself to Jacob, there was no contest – I’m powerful, I’m the first born, who is going to deny me the blessing of the first born? You can have my birth right. That’s why it says in the New Testament that Esau despised his birth right.
I’ll tell you, I’m about to embark on a journey and as I said, God is connecting me with all the great men of God that are from my past, in a very powerful, personal way on this trip. It’s so awesome. And I’ll tell you, there are many many people, many people that have come into our lives that should be still sitting here with us on this journey and they have despised their birth right. Well, what’s the difference between being connected with Pastor John and Jerry Savelle and Kenneth Copeland when I can go directly to Kenneth Copeland and be a partner there, I don’t have to connect through John Bendixen and Jerry Savelle and I can go to Creflo Dollar and I can go to all those other guys and I can connect with them myself, I don’t need another in between to tell me what to do. That’s not how the birth right works, that’s how the legacy is transferred.
The legacy is not transferred because you bypass and let me just tell you, last bit of golden nugget – it’s the skilled, cunning, smart people that always want to bypass, always, because of the Laban Syndrome, where they think they’ve got it all. I can’t learn from somebody that’s not as rich as me, I can’t learn from somebody that’s got the same, you know, show me a person that is as qualified as me and then maybe I’ll listen to them, has many degrees maybe. Let me tell you what the Bible says; go and read Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 1 and 2, go read it – God says He’s going to use the foolishness of this world to confound the wise, He’s going to confound them because it’s the simple things of living in Christ, it’s the simple discipleship things of living in Christ that really confounds people. How can so much power be in something so simple? How can so much authority rest in something that is uncomplicated, you know, surely power and authority lie in degrees, in politics, in money, in things, in connections? Well that’s very typical of Laban Syndrome thinking and it is really the thinking that goes against God’s thinking, because God says, “I’ll show you that unless you become like a little child, you will not inherit the Kingdom of God,” in other words, you won’t even understand Kingdom things if you can’t think like a child, it’s that simple, it’s that simple. Let me tell you, some of the most joyful moments I’ve got is when my granddaughters are crawling around and I’m on the ground with them and they’re spitting on me and, you know, jumping on me and making my hair look funny and I don’t look all sharp and neat like I do now, you know, when I’m on the ground and my head is on the floor and they’re all over me, you know, pure joy! The simplicity of relationship expressed in that moment. If you can’t be with Jesus and the rest of the body of Christ, you won’t see the Kingdom because you feel like,…. “I won’t get on the floor with those kids, they’ll spit on me” -right it’ll stop you from the simplicity of what God’s going to talk to you about. Hallelujah, that’s all for free this morning.
Genesis 29:10, so now I’m fast forwarding because you have to understand, you know that Jacob, what kind of environment Jacob was growing up in: a powerful brother, cunning, smart, skilled whose favour was with his father, so it will explain some things somewhere down the line to you today. Genesis 29:10-15 When Jacob saw Rachel, daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his uncle, Jacob went near and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth and watered the flock of his uncle Laban. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and he wept aloud. Jacob told Rachel he was her father’s relative, Rebekah’s son; and she ran and told her father. When Laban heard of the arrival of Jacob, his sister’s son, he ran to meet him.
Why would Laban run to meet him? Because the last time he had any engagement with anything to do with Abraham, it turned out very well for him, hello? He ran to meet him, and embraced and kissed him and brought him to his house. And [Jacob] told Laban all these things. So what do you think it is that Jacob told him? Jacob told him about how he’d been given the blessing, how he’d been given the birth right and how his brother was angry with him and how his brother was seeking to kill him when his father died and so you will come to see, in this story later on, how his brother had married a woman from the local community who was a real thorn in the flesh for Esau and Isaac and Rebekah, I mean it caused them bitterness in their lives – Esau’s wives. That’s what the Bible says, and so he ran away from that, that’s what he told him. And Laban said to Jacob, just because you are my relative, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?
So the relationship begins based on a contract and it begins based on something that is of value. So what did Jacob do there for a month? What did he do for a month, do you think? The answer is in verse fifteen. 15Just because you are my relative, should you work for me for nothing? What did Jacob do there for the month? He worked. What was the main thing that Laban was about? Sheep, goats, livestock. So now Jacob begins to work on the livestock. So he is being observed by Laban for one month. I guarantee you that what Laban saw in one month, he wanted more of it. That’s why he went from ‘relationship bone and flesh by his own confession, bone and flesh, he went from bone and flesh to a contractual based relationship. Why? Because he wanted to keep him, because of what he saw in one month. That one month was also based on other things he knew about those that came out of Abraham’s household, Isaac’s household. He knew, he had observed. Name your wages. So in this wage negotiation, what’s happening to Jacob? He’s just come out of,…. he’s thirty days away from deception. Right? So here’s the thing: wherever the circumstances are that you’re coming out of, you’d better get the Word of God on something before you go into it because if you’re full of where you’ve came out of, you’re going to be full of it when you go into it. So he’s just come out of deception, come on. He’s ….Jacob’s reference points are deception, inferiority and running from his past. Was he not? Deception, inferiority; to who? To Esau. And he was running from his past. His brother had spoken to people and said, “When dad dies I’m going to kill him, then let’s see what his birth right and his blessing will do for him. Did my father not say that I would break his yoke from my neck? So I’ll just kill him then it’s broken.” That was Esau’s whole attitude towards Jacob. And so Jacob says, “Time for me to go” and so here comes into this new phase of his life, with all these things in his mind. But, that’s not all that he had. What he also had, was he had an encounter with God. He also had the blessing of his father. So, I’m just going to show you what his recent history was.
Genesis 27:42 42These words of Esau, her elder son were repeated to Rebekah. She sent for Jacob her younger son and said to him, See here, your brother Esau comforts himself concerning you [by intending] to kill you. 43So now, my son, do what I tell you; arise, flee to my brother Laban in Haran; 44Linger and dwell with him for a while until your brother’s fury is spent.” Notice she did not say “Until your father dies.” She said, “Stay with him until your brother’s fury is spent. Just for nothing. Just for nothing. My wife is probably better able to speak to you about this; but people who get angry and get vengeful and have fury in their hearts, let me tell you that they do things in the moment that they always regret later, even though they won’t say it. It is regretful, because it is not the self-control of the Holy Spirit that operates through you.
45When your brother’s anger is diverted from you, he will forget [the wrong] that you have done him. Then I will send and bring you back from there. Why should I be deprived of both of you, my sons, in one day? So that is his recent history. Thirty days earlier, more or less, and the travel time, which we don’t know how long it was but it was a significant amount of journey time. It might have been fifteen days, it might have been twenty days, we don’t know, but it’s round about 400km, more or less, that he travelled. Genesis 28:1 1So Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and commanded him, You shall not marry one of the women of Canaan. 2Arise, go to Padan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father, and take from there as a wife one of the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother. 3May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you until you become a group of peoples. 4May He give the blessing [He gave to] Abraham to you and your descendants with you, that you may inherit the land He gave to Abraham, in which you are a sojourner. 5Thus Isaac sent Jacob away. He went to Padan-aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau’s mother.
So this is not the blessing of the father. The father’s blessing has already been given. This is a blessing, this is the blessing that Isaac is sending his son and he’s saying, “I Know you’re going on a journey. Don’t forget the blessing I gave you. Don’t forget the blessing that’s on me. Don’t forget the blessing that’s on your grandfather, Abraham and all the things that God has promised Him, it will come on you.” So he’s saying, “I know that you have the birth right and I now know that you have the blessing. Now I can speak freely as though I was Abraham.” He could not speak freely before that because he only saw Esau as the future. Now that he knows that Jacob is the future he can speak freely with what he knows. Hallelujah. If you can’t see something, you can’t speak into it, even though you may think you have it all covered and it’s all in your order because you know and you are the head of the home, or you are the person that God has blessed and in Isaac’s case he couldn’t see anything different, even though he was the seed. Even though he was the future, he didn’t see what God saw. Someone else in his household saw it but because of his ‘favourite’ obsessions. It’s another golden nugget but I haven’t got time to go there. Because of his ‘favourite’ obsessions, he didn’t even bother to go and ask someone else what they saw. “Because I’m the head of the home I know it all.”
Can I tell you something about leadership? I’ll tell you something about leadership, especially spiritual leadership. Spiritual leadership is about hearing from God and it’s about speaking the words of God, living the ways of God and obeying God in whatever he says, that’s spiritual leadership. I think like Him. I talk like Him. I behave like Him. That’s personal spiritual leadership. Yes? So when it comes to corporate spiritual leadership, that’s the foundation. I think like Him, I talk like Him, I behave like Him. That’s the foundation of personal leadership. So, I’m not going to go through my leadership triangle. In order to go from personal leadership into public leadership, there are some other things that come into the equation. One of them is your gifting and the other thing is your calling.
So when you are a spiritual leader, like I am, like God has given me spiritual leadership, I may be tempted to say, because of the quality of my obedience to God in my personal life, and my gifts and callings and the mantles that are resting upon me, notwithstanding I know what my assignment and my purpose is, notwithstanding my legacy, I don’t have to listen to anybody, or get advice or counsel from anybody. You know what one of the biggest downfalls of spiritual leaders in the earth today is? They don’t want to hear from anybody else. So they put themselves in a place where, “I’m hearing from God, what can any man tell me?” Well, the way that God ran the early church, was that there was twelve, and they heard God together. There is definitely a place in the body of Christ where there is a council of eldership; spiritual people you can turn to and you can share what God has given you, and in the same way that Paul got great and mighty revelations he came with those revelations to the apostles and he says I want to submit to you what God told me. Then when he went to the Gentile churches and things happen in the Gentile churches, he came back again to the apostles and he said, “Let me tell you what’s God doing there and I submit this to you again.” We’re talking about the man who was God’s nominated person to start all of the Church of the New Testament, into the Gentiles, he still came back and submitted himself to the elders.
It’s God’s order; you cannot have authority unless you submit to authority. Your status is irrelevant, the Word of God is the truth. That’s why there are many things that I talk to Brother Joe about, some things I’ll talk to Brother Jerry about. I don’t, I don’t bother Brother Jerry too much because he’s a busy man and he’s got other things that he himself has to take care of. You know, but I speak to my local elders in this community about things I’ve got on my heart and then I go and check it out with those that I have relationship with. Hallelujah. Even this trip that I’m going to America, now, I went to, a long time ago I went to Brother Joe and said, “Brother Joe, this is what I’m thinking of doing, this is why I’m doing it, this is what the Lord is leading me to do. But I’m submitting it to you and if you think that this is not the time and this is not the order then I want you to tell me.” And so then he began to hear from the Lord with me. So I only did that when I felt everyone around me was in agreement with it. Come on now.
Okay, so, but remember Jacob, so he goes into this negotiation with Laban and he’s come out of this recent history where there’s conflict, there’s turmoil, there’s deception, there’s all about his own problems and the inferiority and all these things that he brings with him. But remember Jacob. In chapter 28:12 (Genesis 28:12)…. God had given him a dream and the promise of a future. 12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! 13And behold, the Lord stood over and beside him and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father [forefather] and the God of Isaac; I will give to you and to your descendants the land on which you are lying. So this is God speaking and He says, “I will give you this land that you are lying on now. I will give it to you and to your descendants.” Remember this Jacob. 14And your offspring shall be as [countless as] the dust or sand of the ground, and you shall spread abroad to the west and the east and the north and the south; and by you and your Offspring shall all the families of earth be blessed and bless themselves. 15And behold, I am with you and will keep (watch over you with care, take notice of) you wherever you may go, and I will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done all of which I have told you. Genesis 28:15 (AMPC)
But remember that Jacob, when you’re dealing with Laban. I wonder if he forgot. “Oh Rachel, my Rachel.” He looked into her eyes and he wept…. Ja, the power of a woman. 16Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and he said, surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. 17He was afraid and said, How to be feared and reverenced in this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gateway to heaven! 18Jacob rose early in the morning and took the stone he had put under his head, and he set it up for a pillar (a monument to the vision in his dream), and he poured oil on its top [in dedication]. 19And he named that place Bethel [the house of God]; but the name of that city was Luz at first. 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me food to eat and clothing to wear, 21So that I may come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God; 22 And this stone which I have set up as a pillar (monument) shall be God’s house [a sacred place to me], and of all [the increase of possessions] that You give me I will give the tenth to You.
I have ministered about that already to you and I’m not going to talk again about that except to say ‘but Remember Jacob’ you’re dealing with Laban. But remember Jacob. And I’m saying this to you on purpose because, because when you get into a place where there is a distraction and your future is uncertain and you’ve got a dubious past…. but remember! I’m preaching so well. There is such wealth in this for your freedom and your liberty. Remember Jacob, this is what your father blessed you with.
Genesis 27: 28 28And may God give you the dew of the heavens and of the fatness of the earth and abundance of grain and [new] wine. 29Let peoples serve you and nations bow down to you; be master over your brothers, and let your mother’s sons bow down to you. Let everyone be cursed who curses you and favoured with blessings who bless you. Remember now Jacob when you’re dealing with Laban. Huh? I think he forgot. Why did he forget? Because his current past was nearer to him even than a moment of encounter with God.
So if you want to know a powerful principle about how to be free from Laban’s Syndrome that constantly wants to take you and remind you of your past and your inferiorities and all of the deceptions that you have walked in in your life that have produced negative or no fruit or bad fruit, when all of that has come to you, it almost always is going to be a conflict point of the way that you want to go in your future and what God has promised from the past. So remember, even though Jacob had a past of deception, he had a past of running away, he had people who wanted to kill him, God came and spoke to him and all of the words that were spoken over to him were not about that, they were all about how he was going to be blessed, how people were going to serve him, how even anybody that cursed him would be cursed.
I’ll tell you one of the ways that you are going to get free of that is, when you talk to people, that have the same understanding of the Word as you have,…. so this is a key point; if you’re not talking to people that have the same understanding of the Word as you have, then you are likely to have conversations with them that are very natural, it’s going to be about ‘so how did you water that sheep? How did you let water out of this rock? How did you go about setting up this tent?’ If you have conversation like this constantly then all you can think about is that day to day stuff, and it has a tendency to keep reminding you of your weaknesses and your inferiorities and your complexes from your past. If you go and spend time with people that have the same mind set as you, that have the same heart as you, that are listening to the same things as you, then when something comes out of your mouth, that says, “I don’t feel good about that, or I don’t think Gods got any blessings for me,” “Shut up you! I don’t want to hear that coming out of your mouth!” “Oh now you’re offending me, I thought you were my friend?” “That’s why I am talking to you like this because I am your friend. I am a spirit. I am a person of like-minded faith and spirit and I cannot afford to hear you talk that stuff out of your mouth. Because I know, if you talk that stuff out of your mouth, what are you doing to your future?” You are about to submit yourself to Laban; Mammon; the system of the world. “So shut up! Don’t talk like that.” ‘Well, what have words got to do with it?” Everything.
I’ll tell you what, people often say, doctrinally to me, you know, words are not that important. I ask you, go on a date, a first date, go on a first date with someone and say nothing; and see if words are important or not. Ja, that’s right Jan-Eben, your first date will be your last date! Well, so what are you going to talk about when you’re on your first date? You’re going to start talking like, you know, What places do you go to? Who do you know? What music do you listen to? What are your words expressing? Who you are. Yes? So, if you start talking rubbish about your future out of your mouth, you are declaring how you see yourself in your future. Don’t come around me and talk like that around me. I’ll tell you what happens. If you come around me like that too often and I’ve had this unfortunately, where people take up a lot of my time for long periods of time and they talk how they want to around me. And then eventually God – because of my purity of the way I am before God, eventually God says, “I have to intervene here, and I have to separate you from them because I have to protect you, John. Because I have such a gracious heart, me – John. This is me. I have such a gracious, forgiving, loving heart that I tolerate people’s weaknesses for so long, that actually it’s to my detriment and harm and I allow them to speak around me ‘nonsense’ and even I correct them, and I correct them, and I correct them. Eventually I have to stop correcting them. Then when I stop correcting them I find that my relationship has changed because now, I’m not sustaining them. I have nothing to say to them because they don’t appreciate my words. So, if they don’t value my words, what more have I got to say. So, if you don’t value my words, then where’s our relationship?
Come on now. It’s the same thing between you and God. God has spoken His word. If you choose to speak whatever words you want to speak, you’re saying, “God’s words are of no value to me. My words are of more value to me then God’s words.” Then God has to say, “Well, then you live by your words. So, you create your future with your words. Go at it. I’ve given you the right to do that. Go on and speak what you want.” And then you walk into a future that’s not what you want and you say, “How did I get here?” Well, you didn’t speak God’s words. You were speaking what you wanted, and so your desires of what you wanted came to pass because you are bound to make come to pass what your desires are through your words.
Isn’t that what God’s desire is? Expressed through His words. So, then He releases the power for His desire and to make His words come to pass. That’s why the Bible says, “Not one of His words will return unto Him void. They will all accomplish that which He has sent them out to perform.” Because His will is expressed through His words, and He releases power to make it come to pass. It’s the same thing with you. When you speak your will through your words, you release your power to make your world come to pass. When you do that and you look it all looks grand and like God is blessing me then you say, “Look how God is blessing me.” Meantime it’s your will and your words that has created that. Somewhere down the future you’re going to turn around and say, “Ah, but I’m struggling with this and I’m struggling with that. And this is out of order and this is out of order. And how did I get here?” Well, you created your own world with your words.
I have always said this and I’m blessed and fortunate to be in a position where I can say this to you. That, “I was poor and then I became richer.” You know. And richer is better than poor, for sure. I grew to understand that when you have money, your life becomes a lot more about the choices you want to make rather that any obstacles that will force you into choices. So, when you don’t have money, obstacles force your choices. That does not mean to say they are God’s choices. It just means you are forced into choices and there are some choices you can’t make. But when you have money you can make many choices. And that’s why people normally, that have money make those choices, as their heart desires. Which is why I go back to Jesus who says, “It’s harder for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Not be saved, but to enter the fullness of what God has for them. That’s the kingdom of God. Because, for a camel to enter the eye of the needle, they’ve got to take all the baggage off the camel, get on their knees and walk through the gates of that gate in the wall of Jerusalem. Which means their baggage, and their status, and all of their stuff means nothing to them. Now you’re in a place where you can inherit the Kingdom of God. But it’s difficult for rich people to do that, because they can make all the choices they want.
Then they all said to Jesus, “Well, how is this possible?” Because all of them understood what wealth was. They’ve been living with Jesus and wealth. If you don’t believe me go read your Bible. I don’t want to prove it to you today. But they’ve been living under the banner of Jesus’ wealth for three and a half years at that point. And so, when they come to Jesus and say, “How is that possible, when You called us into the ministry, You made us all wealthy before we even went into the ministry. You gave us money, ‘catch’ through our skill – You gave us big catches of fish. He gave all sorts of stuff that we needed to have so that we can go into the ministry without debt and without worrying about our families. And if that ever ran out then Jesus would have taken care of them because they were His disciples. So, they lived for their time without any worries. Thank you, Sharon. Fishes and loaves, all the time. When they needed tax money, “Just go catch a fish and you’ll find tax money.” Jesus didn’t have to worry about anything.
So, here’s the thing about this, is that if you are in a place where you can make any decision you like, you’re going to make those decisions. And the more you speak about those decisions you want to make, the more you train yourself in making those decisions. Now listen, you don’t have to be wealthy to operate this way either. If you train yourself to watch TV every night, you might not have any money, but just enough to switch on the decoder. Come on now, don’t shut me down cause I’m speaking truth here.
So, you train yourself to get to a point where every nigh you watch TV every night, you watch TV every night, you watch TV every night. So pretty soon there’s no more choices for you to make, cause you’ve placed it into your soul that that’s the choice that you prefer. So, then you live by preference not conviction. So, you don’t have to have a lot of money to make a choice. Ah, but Pastor John, now you’re raising the bar way too high because you talked about that unfortunate word called DSTV. And we all like our DSTV too much. Yeah, you know. So now if it’s not DSTV it could be something else. You could be a workaholic. You could be anything. All I’m saying is that, if you train your soul to make choices that suit you, then you are going to speak words that permit you to make those choices. And so then, you are going to speak what you desire. Then you desire what you speak, and then when you desire what you speak then the power is released to make that come to pass.
This is what happened with Jacob when he’s negotiating with Laban. And he says, “Laban I’ll give you seven years for your daughter.” I don’t know how long it could have taken. He could have said, “I’ll give you one year.” Cause, didn’t God say that the blessing will be on you, Jacob? Didn’t He say, I mean, didn’t he just get through telling Laban everything? Come on. So, what he did was he went into a ‘value system mode’. That’s always what happens when you are confronted with Laban. When you are talking to Laban and negotiating, Laban will always need to initiate the negotiation. And Laban initiates the negotiation on the back of, ‘Bone of my bone. We are tight, man. We are close. We’re intimate. We are best buds.’ They will try and make it as difficult for you so that whatever value they want to impose on your life, they’re going to impose that value system on you.
So how is Jacob, now that he’s thirty days with Laban, told him all about this blessing on his life. Told him all about the stuff that is inheritance that is coming to him. How is he going to say, “I’ll just give you a year of my life for your daughter?” Cause now the value system is, “Surely I’ve got to value Laban’s daughters more than just one year. Certainly, Rachel is more valuable to me that just one year. So, I’ll give him seven years for Rachel. I wonder if it could have taken seven months? But remember, he came out of deception, he came out of inferiority, and he had his mother’s words ringing in his ears, “Stay there and linger there, dwell there until I call for you, until your brother’s fury has spent, then I’ll call you back.” So, he’s more worried about his past and so he’s talking about his future based on what was in his past. And if you talk about your future based on what’s in your past, the Laban Syndrome is always going to make sure that you pay a price that you don’t have to pay. Every time.
The Laban Syndrome is so deceitful. I need to talk to you about this because in the next message…. (it’s 11 o’clock, right? I’ve still got a bit of time right? I think you should stand for a minute, just so that I can get some oxygen to your brain.) Because this is important stuff and this is powerful Bible stuff that I’m teaching you today. Like I said to you – there’s no books involved here, there’s no motivational books. There’s no help yourself leadership tips here from Anthony Robbins. This is all from the Word of God. This is pure God. Just turn around and just greet somebody and say, “Wake up.” Do something great. (Congregation takes a short break)
Praise the Lord. I know you’re getting something out of this today, hey? It’s the good stuff, right? Praise the Lord. Please be seated. I want to tell you that Jacob is coming into this conversation with Laban and he has been part of other things that have happened in his father’s life. Genesis 26:1, 1There was a famine in the land, as bad as the famine during the time of Abraham. And Isaac went down to Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, in Gerar. 2God appeared to him (to Isaac) and said, “Don’t go down to Egypt; stay where I tell you. 3Stay here in this land and I’ll be with you and bless you. I’m giving you and your children all these lands, fulfilling the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. 4I’ll make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky and give them all these lands. All the nations of the Earth will get a blessing for themselves through your descendants. 5And why? Because Abraham obeyed my summons and kept my charge (or) my commands, my guidelines, my teachings.” 6So Isaac stayed put in Gerar (Genesis 26:1-5).
So can I just make sure that you get this from the Word? There is nothing here that God is giving an instruction to Isaac to sow seed or do anything. Yes? All He says is, “Stay in this land and I’ll bless you here.” Right? So Isaac obeys God – in a time of famine. What did Abraham do? The father of Faith? He went to Egypt. So God speaks to Isaac as he’s about to leave for Egypt – God speak to Isaac and says, “Stay here and I’ll bless you here.” So what does he do? He gets a Word from God. “Thank You for this Word Lord – it’s giving me direction for my life. I know now that there’s nowhere else I can go. There is nothing else that I can do that there is… this is the best place right here.” So what would I normally do if I was right here? So the famine says nobody is sowing any seed. So when your income drops because there’s no money out there, that sounds like famine to me. So he looks at the whole thing and said, “But God has blessed me. God’s told me He’s going to give me this whole land and He’s going to bless me.” 12Isaac planted crops in that land…. Let’s just stop there – 12Isaac planted crops in that land…. (Genesis 26:12)
Isaac, what are you doing? Isaac…. everybody else…. nobody else is sowing. Come on – nobody can afford to so now in this famine. I mean can’t you see there’s no rain? Can’t you see that the whole system is not geared to prosper you now? Can you see how the system can detain you from doing what God wants you to do? Hey? Because if you do what everybody else is doing, then you’re not going to do what God tells you to do – and if you take your lead from what everybody else is doing, then you cannot be obedient to God, because it’s more important to do what others are doing. And who can blame the others, because the circumstances were dictating ‘human wisdom must prevail’. Human wisdom is always subject to what God says – and so if you allow ‘human wisdom’ to be subject to what God says, then you will always obey what God says before you will obey what ‘human system’ says:
12Isaac planted crops in that land and took in a huge harvest. God blessed him (Genesis 26:12). Other translations say “and in the same year, he reaped a hundredfold return” – in the same year. Well, obviously, because he sowed and it takes a year for the crop to grow. It’s one cycle. So how come he sowed in famine and reaped the harvest and the others didn’t? Well, they were more concerned about the conditions. He was more concerned about the Word of God. So when he took his seed and put his seed in the ground, he fully expected for God to do what God would normally best do if He was in a time of blessing and abundance. What was there to do? Reproduce, blessing and abundance.
So, I’m telling you all of this because not only is this significant for me, because Brother Jerry ministered a very powerful message about sowing in famine and he obeyed God and he took $1 000 out of every one of his ministry accounts, which amounted to
$10 000 at that time, which was all the money his ministry had – and he took in a time when he needed a lot more money for many other things – and he sowed $1 000 out of each ten departments of his ministry. Remember, he’s now taking everything that he has in his ministry. He has nothing left. There are no finances left and he takes a $1 000 and he goes to Brother Kenneth Copeland and he gives, from each of these departments, he sows it into Brother Copeland’s ministry – his spiritual father. Hold on a minute! This is a man that is living as a man of integrity. How do you…. where does your wisdom come from Brother Jerry, that you would give away everything that is in your ministry so now you can’t even pay your bills? Because God gave him a revelation. God gave him a Word and he said, “If I want to have something significant happen in my ministry, then now’s the time to obey Him.”
Now just hear me – you can do what the principle of Brother Jerry said, because Brother Jerry said to him, teach my body that this is the way that you should live. But Brother Jerry had specific instruction on how to apply that, amen? And as we say, the rest is history. And you will hear from his own testimony how Kenneth Hagin stood up in a meeting and yet Brother Jerry was sitting there and he said, “Brother Jerry, get up. I’m about to sow the biggest seed I’ve ever sown in my ministry.” So Kenneth Hagin was used as an instrument to God for God to raise the bar with Kenneth Hagin. Because he’s about to sow the biggest seed he’s ever sowed out of his ministry ever – he sows it into …not Copeland’s ministry, …not Roberts’s ministry, but Jerry Savelle’s
ministry. Why did he sow it into Jerry’s ministry and not Copeland and not Oral Roberts’ and all these other great men that were in his life? Because Jerry was the one that was stepping out in Faith and sowing in famine. He had the Word of God about the blessing and he decided to do something that, at that time, it was God’s ordained moment for Kenneth Hagin to raise the bar for himself and do it with Brother Jerry – and he gave him his airplane, debt free.
Isn’t that just the way that God is always going to work with us? If you’ve given away a R100 000 before, you think He’s going to not ask you to do it again just cause you did it once? No I can, on the contrary if you did it in Faith, then you should be believing in the harvest of that. Then your life should be going from strength to strength and so then your time should come where you have increased because you have associated and your increase has been shown. Now what you do with your increase, … is God is going to speak to you and say, “I’m not going ask you to give it once, I’m going to ask you to give it ten times,” in other words it’s now going to be a million I’m going to ask you to give away. “Eish Lord, but this is a lot of money,” yeah well, 100 thousand was a lot of money for you then, why is it any different cause it’s now a million? Well it’s just a much bigger number and you can do much more with a million than you could do with a hundred thousand. Ja, that may be true, but in God’s hands your million become — what? Your future. And if you think he’s going stop with a million, think again because he’s not about to stop there and say, “Okay you passed all the tests, you can just rest now. You never have to do this again, He’s never going to stop with you because now you’re proving to be a channel that he can use and he is saying, “So you got the channel, you now you know where your walk is with me, now you know what your assignment is with me, I’m going keep pressing this button and I’m going keep making it bigger and I’m going keep making it bigger. It’s not because I want to take something from you, it’s because I want to get something to you. And so, you think a million is what it’s going be, I’m going keep pushing you to your ‘choke point’ every time because if I don’t push you to your ‘choke point’, then you’ll never know how much you can grow and the ‘choke point’ is always going be at the famine point.
And Isaac and Jacob were together when this happened. Jacob observed his father Isaac do this. So, when he arrived at Laban’s house, he brought that legacy with him but he forgot cause “Rachel, my Rachel,” but but but you know, I mean I understand Jacob because he just came out of deception, he just came out of conflict, he was running away from his past, his brother wanted to kill him, there were many poor decisions that he had so-called made. But at the same time God had blessed him, He kept reminding him ….”Don’t think about your brother, think about your future, don’t think about your deception, think about the blessing, I already prophesied before you were born that you were going to have the birth right and the blessing. Don’t think about what you had to do to get it, you got it now go.” That’s the grace of God – you can’t pay any more price for what Jesus paid for you, you can only choose to live in it now. Hallelujah.
Watch this 12-15…The man got richer and richer by the day until he was very wealthy. Genesis 26:12-15 (MSG). Have you got any a doubt about what God was doing with Isaac here? Can you please say, “richer and richer until he was very wealthy.” Can I say that in that time in that he was probably in the ‘billionaire’ status. I’m just trying to put it into context for you – he got ‘richer and richer until he was very wealthy’. Wow. Is this possible in God? Has He not given us Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as our fathers of Faith? Is Jesus not the saviour of – and did he not comes as the seed of Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob? Are the blessings of Abraham not all ours? Even bypass all the law of Moses; just come to the cross of salvation – we become the inheritors of everything that Abraham inherited. Isn’t that what it says in Romans? Isn’t that what it says in Galatians? Isn’t that what it says in Hebrews? Just go read your Bible; it will tell you that everything that belonged to Abraham, is ours in Christ Jesus! So we don’t even have to go to the Law, us Gentiles. We don’t even have to worry about the law. Don’t worry about all the lambs, and the sacrifices, and all of those image things; of the tabernacle and the blood and the goalposts and the lampstands and the whatever – I mean there’s all wonderful meanings in them and -don’t get me wrong, but they all pointed to Jesus! And so when Jesus came he fulfilled all of that! Hallelujah. So that means we are blessed to be very, very rich. But Laban is going to suck you into a value, a value transaction. You’ve got to work seven years to pay for something.
So he accumulated flocks and herds and many, many servants, so much so that the Philistines began to envy him. Genesis 26:12-15 (MSG). They took… well this is the Laban spirit/Syndrome that is at work here. They got back at him by throwing dirt and debris into all the wells that his father’s servants had dug back in the days of his father Abraham, clogging up all the wells [Genesis 26:12-15 (MSG)]. What are they trying to do? They’re saying God is obviously blessing you and favouring you with things that we can’t touch, so with all this blessing how are you going to feed your flocks? So they filled up the source of where his blessing could be sustained. Come on now. The enemy of God is….When you start to walk in the blessing of God, he’s going to come after the source of what sustains you. And it’s going to look like: ‘How am I going to get out of this? Because all of the people are clogging up the sustaining part of my wealth. Huh!
So, he renamed them using the original names his father had given them . Genesis 26:17-18 (MSG). One day as Isaac’s servants were digging in the valley, they came on a well of spring water. The Shepherd’s of Gerar quarrelled with Isaac’s shepherds, claiming, “The water is ours.” So Isaac named the well Esek – or Quarrel – because they quarrelled over it. They dug another well and there was a difference over that one also, so he named it Sitnah (Accusation). Genesis 26:19-24 (MSG). Huh… So now we’re talking about quarrelling and accusations. When we get into Laban Syndrome you will see this very principle is at work in Laban. There will be quarrels and accusations when God is blessing you, and taking you to the next level of everything in your life.
He went on from there and dug yet another well. But there was no fighting over this one so he named it Rehoboth, or Wide-Open Spaces, saying, “Now God has given us plenty of space to spread out in the land.” From there he went to Beersheba. That very night God appeared to him and said, “I’m the God of Abraham your father; don’t fear a thing because I’m with you. I’ll bless you and make your children flourish because of Abraham my servant. Isaac built an altar there and prayed, calling on God by name. He pitched his tent and his servants started digging another well. (Genesis 26:19-24 (MSG)
Let me tell you, when God is with you, He’s going to give you the strategy to go and say, “Oh that well is closed because of quarrelling; and that well is closed because of accusations; and that well is closed because people have come against me; and that well is closed because it doesn’t look like there’s any further life or opportunity in it, because they’ve thrown dirt and dust stuff into it. So that’s okay I’ll go and dig another well.” And they might even pursue you to that well and say, “You don’t have any rights to come here”. Then you go dig another well, because you are not about… and you have no problem with scarcity problems. God is not a God of scarcity, He’s the God of abundance and blessing! The Laban Syndrome and the world’s [one word unclear] syndrome wants you to believe there’s a scarcity, so they will quarrel with you and accuse you because they say, “There’s only so much to go around and you shouldn’t have it!”
Remember, I played you that video clip of Brother Jesse Duplantis, and how the world system had all kinds of things to say about his aeroplane. And they say, “Why do you want a bigger, better aeroplane when you’ve already got a good one? Why don’t you rather take that $50 million and go feed the poor?” You know what they’re doing? They’re quarrelling, quarrelling and accusing him because the blessing of God is on him. They envy him, and so they’ve got an issue with him and that’s always the case when you believe God for something. He will rise up people to speak against you. It’s like Brother Jesse says, you know – he’s never been that that famous in his whole life! And the news made him famous, because they quarrelled with him. And what people mean for your harm, God is going to turn for your certain good. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
My word. You know, if you read on there, you’ll see that Abimelech comes to him and they chased him away from him because they said you’re too strong and you’re too powerful for us and you must go and live somewhere else. That’s why he went to go and find another place to live. And then he became so much more powerful that Abimelech comes to him and they’re now all afraid of him. And so, 28They said, “We’ve realised that God is on your side. We’d like to make a deal between us – a covenant that we maintain friendly relations. We haven’t bothered you in the past; we treated you kindly and let you leave us in peace. So – God’s blessing be with you!” 30Isaac laid out a feast and they ate and drank together. Early in the morning they exchanged oaths. Then Isaac said good-bye and they parted as friends. (Genesis 26:28, 30MSG). So if you have an opportunity, to make friends with your enemies, you should. But you shouldn’t just do it whenever you think because you’re under pressure to do it. You must wait for the right time of God for you to do it.
32Later that same day, (that sounds like the same year). Later that same day, Isaac’s servants came to him with news about the well they had been digging. “We’ve struck water!” Isaac named the well Sheba (Oath), and that’s the name of the city, Beersheba (Oath-Well), to this day. Hallelujah. 34When Esau was forty years old he married Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite. They turned out to be thorns in the sides of Isaac and Rebekah. (Genesis 26:32- 34 MSG)
So I’m, like I said to you, I’m going backwards and forwards so that you can get a full understanding of this picture. Because remember, I’m just saying to you, that Jacob came from a place where he was in conflict, he had deception, he had to run away from his brother who wanted to kill him. As far as he knew, according to his father, he was going to die. But actually his father lived another 40 years or 60 years after that time. So all that happened was that, like I told you before, that I explained to you the words, that when the Bible says that his eyes drew dim – means he just didn’t have a vision for the future anymore. But after he blessed Jacob and Jacob left him, he got his vision for the future back. He did. Anyway. He had to wait to be alive because Jacob made an oath to God that he would come back and tithe and he came to tithe to his father. Praise the Lord. Now it’s the time of God for you, Jacob. Now it’s the time of God for you, Jacob.
Genesis 30:25 (I’ve got about 20 more minutes on this thing and then we’re going to break. Is that good for you? Are you still have clarity of mind and are you still focused with me? Okay.) So now, Jacob has worked for 20 years, for Laban. So they find themselves at this crossroads after 20 years. And Rachel first couldn’t have children, then God gave her children. And at this point in time Jacob has got many children. But Rachel gives birth to another child and his name is Joseph. And 25Jacob said to Laban, send me away, that I may go to my own place and country. (Genesis 30:25 AMPC). I’ve said to you the other day, it’s interesting to me that this happened after Joseph was born, because Joseph was the man that was going to be the redeemer for Israel. Remember, Jacob’s name had not yet been changed but Joseph was born to be the redeemer of Israel. If we don’t think that God’s got a plan and He’s got us on assignment, then this should tell you everything you need know. Joseph was born with an assignment to redeem Israel. Israel didn’t even yet have a name yet. His name was still Jacob. He still had to have a confrontation with God in the future that God was going to change his name for Joseph to become the redeemer of the people that were born for Israel. But God is so smart, hey. Why would you actually want to do things on your own way when you got such a smart God working for you? You want to talk about ‘smarts’? God is the smarter of the ‘smarts’. There’s no one smarter than God. If you, say if you want to connect and be in touch with people that are smart, well, stick with God. He’s got everything covered. If you will let Him. He’s not got you covered if you won’t let Him.
Okay. 25Send me away that I might go to my own place and country. 26Give me my wives and my children, for whom I have served you, and let me go; for you know the work which I have done for you. (Genesis 30:25, 26 AMPC) So I want you to just understand this language for a moment. This language is give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you. And let me go for you know the work which I have done for you. So he is speaking Laban’s language that all of what has happened to this point is a transaction of’ value-based performance’. And if we live in a relationship where we live in a value based performance, then we are never going to access the true blessing of God. Because we will always limit God to what we think God’s – we are entitled to. Come on. Now this is a case where I know South Africans feel entitled. But this is a case where the Body of Christ can feel entitled. You have permission to feel entitled because Jesus gave you the title of blessed and favoured one.
27And Laban said to him, if I have found favour in your sight, I pray you [do not go]; for I have learned by experience and from the omens in divination that the Lord has favoured me with blessing on your account. 28He said, State your salary and I will give it. 29Jacob answered him, You know how I have served you, and how your possessions, your cattle and sheep and goats, have fared with me. 30For you had little before I came, and it has increased and multiplied abundantly; and the Lord has favoured you with blessings wherever I turned. But now, when shall I provide for my own house also? 31[Laban] said, What shall I give you? And Jacob said, you shall not give me anything. (Genesis 30:27-31 AMPC) Now he’s changing the rules of the game. I am no longer going to allow you to put your performance measurements on me. Neither are you going to give me what you value me at. Our relationship is no longer based on a ‘value based relationship’, it’s going to be based on ‘my Covenant and Blessing’.
32Let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted animal and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and such shall be my wages. 33So later when the matter of my wages is brought before you, my fair dealing will be evident and answer for me. So now here’s what’s happening. His transaction is based on his Covenant. His words with Laban is based on his value system. So you can’t speak to Laban about your Covenant. He doesn’t understand it. You have to talk to Laban about his value based transaction system so that he thinks he’s got one over you. Laban is never going to allow you to have anything over him. He’s always going to want to control your future and your destiny and your assignment. So you got to speak his language while you’re working with your Covenant. Hallelujah. And this is in my Leadership Academy. It’s in my business school. I’m not even preaching anything new, yet. It’s just in a new season and a new context.
33So later when the matter of my wages is brought before you, my fair dealing will be evident and answer for me. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the sheep, if found with me, shall be counted as stolen. 34And Laban said, Good; let it be done as you say. (Genesis 30:33,34 AMPC) Just like that. Yeah, this is Laban – I’m in control now. He’s fallen another time in my trap. And this time he’s making the stick for his own back. I’m not even making it for him. Have at it Jacob. Go boy! Because this conniving, scheming man that he was …. 35The same day [Laban] removed the he-goats that were streaked and spotted and all the she-goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every black lamb, and put them in charge of his sons. (Genesis 30:35 AMPC)
That’s like, someone enters into a contract with you then after you’ve signed the contract, he changes all the terms of the interest rates and all the way that you have to pay back the loan and everything starts changing all the time and you couldn’t even see it coming. 36And he put them in charge of his sons and he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob; and Jacob was then left in care of the rest of Laban’s flock. Huh! So now, how would you think in the natural if this is you. You’ve just come to a deal with this guy that he mustn’t pay you any wages. Your wages is going to be the speckled and spotted that are going to be born from this point onwards, then he takes all the he-goats and all the she-goats and he takes all of the ones that are speckled and spotted he removes them three day journey away and he says, “Okay, let’s see you prosper now.”
There were none of these conditions talked about between Jacob and Laban before the contract so Laban was within his right to do that. Let me tell you, if you dealing with Laban and you think you’re smart enough to beat him, it’s just a matter of time
before something he does comes around the back door and bites you. I don’t care
how much money you’ve got or haven’t got. You know my favourite question about this: Where is Steve Jobs now? It’s not on the earth. So what did his money do for him? It just a matter of time before Laban Syndrome comes in the back door and bites you. Steve Jobs is just a very high-profile person. We can talk about Heath Ledger, a guy that was on top of his game as an actor. “I think I can control substance abuse,” until one day he’s found in his hotel room, dead, because he overdosed. Maybe we should talk about Michael Jackson. These are just high-profile people that I can talk
about. You think you can control Laban Syndrome with your strength, with your
fame, with your power, with your might? It’s not very long, because the author of
Laban’s Syndrome is the devil and as long as you’re useful to him, he’ll use you
and then sometimes not even.
Best we give ourselves to God. But God, you know, He’s not going to let you off the hook and say, “I’ll have everything you’ve got for me but I think I’ll hang around with Laban.” That’s the epitome of Laban Syndrome: Is that, I’m going to be neutral towards God. I’m not going to be a fanatic. Because I don’t actually know whether my Faith will work, so I’m going to keep a foot in the world, and so I’m going to see if the world system will work for me and I know all the contacts work, and all the connections work in the world. So I’ll keep this going and then I’ll give a bit to God to keep God happy and so I’ll tithe every month, but maybe not even. Let’s see if I can get away without tithing.
I’m going to take you forward now to Genesis 31:1 and then I’m going to take you back and then I’m going to be done with a session. Genesis 31:1 ….1Jacob heard Laban’s son complaining, Jacob has taken away all that was our father’s; he has acquired all this wealth and honour from what belonged to our father…. say what? He’s acquired all this wealth and honour from what belonged to our father. The ‘scabanga’ father, that God blessed because of Jacob, who changed the terms of the contract with Jacob, 10 times, and then when he made a new deal, he made it very squarely in his favour. Now they’re complaining that Jacob has got all the wealth and honour that belonged to their father, now it’s on Jacob. What a big turnaround, how did this happen. When Laban went to every possible way that he could do to make sure that Jacob didn’t get it!…BUT GOD! BUT IT’S YOUR TIME NOW JACOB!, … BUT GOD! That’s probably the best Amen I’ve got, Yoh! ….And Jacob noticed that Laban looked at him less favourably than before. Then the Lord said to Jacob, Return to the land of your fathers and to your people and I will be with you. Genesis 31:2 What had the Lord said to Jacob? Come on now. Jacob said, “It’s time for me to move on here but he had a Word from the Lord: The time has come, you can’t delay this any further. You’ve been here too long. You’ve worked under a weight system which you allowed yourself to get sucked into for too long now I’ve got to come and intervene on what you allowed yourself to get sucked into for too long. Because you permitted yourself to work on a value-based system and a performance-based system that you yourself knows has been keeping you tormented for these twenty years. So now I’ve got to come and speak to you and say, “It’s time to move.”
Hey, come on. Talk to me Church. Did the Lord not speak to me and say to me, “It’s time to move John,” and I went into a 40-day separation and what happened when the Lord said it’s time to move John. When I went into my closet and I began to pray for forty days, God said, “It’s not about you John, it’s actually about your father Jerry; your spiritual father; I want you to pray for him, I want you to bless . I want you to take care of him. I want you to start pouring out prayers for his future, not yours. Tell me if everything didn’’t start changing from that day onwards. We’ve had identity change we’ve had revival, we’ve had all kinds of blessings, we’ve had everything change in this ministry. If you haven’t changed with it, I can’t say anything about that. But everything has changed, it has changed, and I’m going, now back, and it’s going to change even more when I come back. I’m telling you, I already know stuff that I cannot even talk to you about yet but I already know stuff; it’s coming down the track.
You know, if you stand on a train track and you hear the whistle and you can hear the sound then you better be thinking, this is a train coming. You know, you can’t stand on a train track and think maybe there are cows coming. You better be thinking there’s a train coming. Let me tell you, I’m standing on the train track and I’ve heard the whistle sound and I can see the smoke blowing and the train of God’s blessing is coming our way! Hallelujah!
Then Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the fields to his flock (Genesis 31:4)…. Notice this, when God gives you the blessing, this is not the time to take your foot off the accelerator. He wouldn’t even go back to the tent where they were at. He called him to him, because he was not going to have Laban’s sons come and steal his future. ‘Scabangas’ they are! No, ….we had a guy give us a quote recently, he’s never going to recover from this, I can tell you. He gave us a quote to put compost on our lawn at our house, 12 cubic meters, he quoted us R17 000!! R17000! If he put that much compost on our grass, we may never have recovered and our neighbours along with us, because the stink would have stayed forever, you know what I mean. R17 000. Sharon’s like oblivious because she’s not thinking about this, you know. She’s just, “Well babes, we got to fix the grass you know, we’ve got to fix the grass, you know, we got to have green grass for the summer, we have got grandchildren and got to have green grass for the summer.” I said, “Babes, you know, I don’t know much about fertilizing lawn, but R17000 is like, just too much. So then we had Miranda and a few other people call around and Bertus and a few people and see what’s going on. We found out we can actually get, watch this, Pretoria rates R2500, Witbank rates R1800 – R2200 for the same amount of compost. R17000!? So how much is the labour? Well the labour’s maybe R3000 or R4000 and that includes the very expensive guy that is the owner of the business and his rate to stand around for the day and check out the workers, so to his credit, he said, “You don’t need me, you just need,,,,, this is Bertus’ contact; he was a good man. He gave us the right stuff, you know. He so then he said, “You don’t need me, you just need some labourers and they can do the lawn, you know, you can get away with maybe R3000/R3500.”
So then we had someone call back this guy because now I don’t want to talk to him because if I talk to him, I’m going to show him the five-fold ministry. Our whole bill could be R3500 and he was charging us R17000 – just because we have an address. Come on now. So when one of our employees called him, he says, “Nee, ek verneek julle.” (Afrikaans: I’m cheating you). He says, “Actually, I’m not going to do business with you,” so we said, “Ja, no right, go away, go.” It was the only way he could recover is to say; come straight out with it, “Ek verneek julle.” And so by the way, I can’t actually operate with you anymore with integrity, so I don’t want your business. Cheers china; don’t come and quote me again. If I hear about anyone else that he’s quoting in the area, I’m going to say, Watch out for this guy, don’t take anything he promises you for nothing, because he’s not giving you nothing for nothing!”
The Laban Syndrome wants to “verneek” you (cheat you) every time. Do you understand what I am saying? There is always around the corner, is Laban’s Syndrome waiting for you somewhere because of the love of money that is involved.
So, 7But your father has deceived me and changed my wages ten times, but God did not allow him to hurt me. 8If he said, The speckled shall be your wages, then all the flock bore speckled; and if he said, The streaked shall be your hire, then all the flock bore streaked. 9Thus God has taken away the flocks of your father and given them to me. Watch this: How did all this happen – which is why I bypassed the process? How did all this happen? 10And I had a dream at the time the flock conceived. I looked up and saw that the rams which mated with the she-goats were streaked, speckled, and spotted. 11And the Angel of God said to me in the dream, Jacob. And I said, Here am I. 12And He said, Look up and see, all the rams which mate with the flock are streaked, speckled, and mottled; for I have seen all that Laban does to you. 13I am the God of Bethel… Where I came to meet you…Where you anointed the pillar and where you vowed a vow to Me. Now arise, get out from this land and return to your native land. (Genesis 31:7-13)
Let me tell you, Jacob; all that he did when he sat there and he took those little pieces of twigs and he cut speckled and spotted in – he had a dream, he had a vision, it wasn’t about the twigs, he was just putting into practical terms, what he had already seen in the Spirit by God; and so when he cut the twigs, it was a reminder to him, not to the goats. Because what could those twigs do to the goats? The Angel of the Lord had said, “I am supernaturally conceiving for you through them.”
I believe, it is time for you and me to talk about supernatural productivity. I want to talk about supernatural, divine conception. You know the Bible talks about the immaculate conception of Mary? I want to talk to you, for just two minutes, about the divine, immaculate conception of dreams and visions that God will give you and He will place them in your mind, and He will place them in your heart, and He will give you the moment, and the time, and the opportunity, where all you will have to do is to say, “I no longer listen to the ‘performance-based value systems’ of the world, come on now. I have a Covenant with God, and my Covenant is my base point, even though I have to sit under the Laban terms of contract, that is not where I am measured, I am under Covenant.”
I want to sound like Martin Luther King for a minute: I have a dream. I had a dream! When I started to get prosperous and God’s blessing started to come on my life because I took the Word and lived the Word. Remember my story: we had no money for food in our cupboards; we had no food in our cupboards. We couldn’t pay the rent. We were behind on the rent. We didn’t have cars and we stood at the cupboards and we spoke food into the cupboards. We spoke rent money into our hands. We spoke blessing into our lives when there was no blessing. Do you remember my story?
Then God turned my whole life around and made me very prosperous and so I didn’t know what to do with all of this money and so I spent it ‘unwisely’. And I dug myself into a hole and I became very stupid because money made me stupid. Thank you baby; Sharon says dumb and dumber and we don’t know where the dumbest is yet but anyway. Dumb dumber, but anyway, that’s what that’s when you’ve have no money and you’ve lived in a poverty mentality your whole life and suddenly money just begins to flow, an abundance, you begin to do stupid things. I did stupid things. We did stupid things, together.
So then I had to believe God out of all of that ‘gemors’ (Afrikaans: mess; a financial mess), all over again. And He did, He helped us. So I just want to finish off with this Laban Syndrome story for you, ne. So now I am working myself out of the “gemors” and I go to work for a company, and when I get there, remember my story hey? They wanted to sign me up; rules and regulations; value system; performance measurement – Senior Sales Executive. In that company, in that time, that was a big title and it was a big job, and you could make lots of money – you with me? But before I even join them they say stay at home and have a holiday, we’ve got something else going on in the company here. Values, performance-based systems – Covenant. Stay at home; take a holiday. I haven’t even joined them yet. Take a holiday. During the weeks holiday, they called me in to meet the Managing Director. The reason we asked you to stay away is because we are changing the rules for you because we don’t want you to come in as a Senior Sales Executive, we want you to come in as a Sales Manager and it can take longer for you to become Sales Manager if you start as a salesman, so we are going to just put you straight in as the Sales Manager. So they already changing the rules and regulations of value-performance based system to accommodate the covenant child. I’ve done nothing for it yet.
So when I join the company now as a Sales Manager, but, “By the way, this is not a cushy job and you know, this is all good for you, and we so glad that you came; you’re the right guy for the job, but by the way, there are three guys that are underperforming and ones an alcoholic and you’ve got to fire them and then it leaves you with three guys left in your team to do this amount of job, here in Johannesburg. And so we won’t talk about the rest yet but you’ve got to fix this job. And by the way your sales quota for the next 6 months to the financial year is going to be this much money, and if you hit that, you know, all good and well the amount of money that comes to you that is supposed to come to you, because you would have done a fine job.” I said, “Thank you, where do I sign?” Value system, performance measurements – let me sign the paper. “Thank You Lord, this is not how You pay me, the Covenant is how You pay me.” But how are you going to fix this? That’s not up to me. I’ve just got a confession; I’ve got a Covenant. Divine reproduction cycle,…. kick in here! Divine reproduction, come on. Why do I say reproduction? Because God gave Jacob a vision of what was happening in the Spirit so he was reproducing what happened in the Spirit on the earth, so it was a divine reproduction.
All Jacob did was just cut twigs to remind himself speckled, spotted, and mottled. And he threw them in the water and says you’ve got to remember this is me, you know. It doesn’t matter what you do afterwards I’m just going to act on my Faith. That is all I’m going to do because I know this is going to happen. It happened so fast that even Laban’s head got spinning. Because how does this happen? Only through Divine Intervention.
I started in that Sales Management position, the anointing of the God came upon me. This guy that was an alcoholic; he was ducking and diving and trying to do all this kind of stuff and the Lord just gave me wisdom, and I had just an absolute; I had just a vision of how to manage him and he was a much older guy and I said, eventually after a month I said, “Come on, you don’t want me to do this and you don’t want to find yourself in a position where you and I have got to keep boxing like this,” I said, “You’re more mature than this, you’ve been around the industry longer than me, you know, if you decide to leave then you still got a future somewhere else and I don’t have to tell anybody about what is really going on with your life. You have got a chance to sort this out. Don’t make me do what you are forcing me to do”. That was the wisdom of God, you know. And He said, “I have got you”. A couple of days later he handed in his resignation, off he went into the sunset. He did. He went and found another job and I do not know what happened to him after that. Another guy who was selling with us, God gave me the wisdom and the understanding of where his skills lay and I went to one of the other corporate conglomerates that worked with us in a partnership and I said to them, “You know, this guy that is working for me, will be very suited to your business. I’ve checked him out and I have watched his personality and I see how he sells and you know me from my previous jobs, I am telling you, this guy would do good for your company.” They said, “Send him, let us do a thing “. So they did an evaluation on him and they said, “You are right, this guy is perfect for the job that we need”. And so he went along there and within six months, he was like, soaring. So the wisdom of God then,… you know:
In Laban’s Syndrome, they saw me as doing them a solid. In my Covenant rights, I just got rid of a problem. I am more on my way to getting God’s blessing on my life. Yeah, so here I find myself, I have got six months to make money. And they all told me, the famous ‘they’; ‘the ones who know’. “It’s drought time. It’s famine time. You can’t sow your seed here. You’ll get no return here”. I said, “Lord, it is Covenant time. I don’t care about the famine; It is Covenant time”. The Covenant words that kept coming out of my mouth was, “I am debt free through the miracle power of Jesus. I am debt free by the miracle power of Jesus.” Because I am in a ‘gemors’, a whole bunch of hurt that I put myself in. Come on now. If you can’t be honest and admit where you’ve been, then you can’t have God help you get out of where you are at.
So, I am working. So there is about 60 days left till the end of the year and we are like 70% or thereabouts. Everybody is looking at my numbers and they are looking at everything I have done and they say, “John, don’t panic, you are doing well. By our value system performance measurement, you are doing well. You are going to walk into the next year with a good solid base, maybe you should hold back some of these orders because six months of ‘honey moon’ and you have done very well so hold back some orders so that you start the next year off with a bang.”
Yeah, they may know how much money you got in the pipeline, ne? Laban Syndrome. We see what is coming so we will up your game here so you don’t earn too much money. I said, “I will just let God be God”. When they closed the books, my number sat at 235% of target. And they set it up, ‘they’ set it up, that when I went over 110, because they didn’t ever think I will get to110, never mind 235, ‘they’ set it up that if I went over by,…. after 110% of target, my commission graph went like that. In fact, everything I sold after 110 was like, we split the profit equally. In a corporate company, that doesn’t happen, because they didn’t think it was possible. Like Laban moved things three days away. “Let’s see if you can reproduce from that!”
I have a dream: I am debt free through the miracle power of Jesus. I got a Covenant agreement right here and the Laban Syndrome that wants to measure me, that wants to talk about contacts and connections and wants to control the outcome and wants to control the narrative and wants to control the culture with words and performance and value, does not apply to me. I have a Covenant.
So they forked out so much money to me that they themselves said, “This is like, Uh,” ….When a big corporate company pays you so much money that they are chewing on the bone, then you must know that they don’t like what is happening here. Three years in a row, God did that for me. It didn’t matter how much they put the money up on the target, I kept busting it by not 110%, 150%, 200% every year. Three years, we were debt free by the miracle power of Jesus. And so, then, they said to me, “You are too valuable to us, name your wages so we don’t lose you.” I said, “Funny you said that,” I didn’t have Laban Syndrome knowledge by then, I was being led by the Spirit. I said, “Funny you said that. Actually, earning this amount of money in this commission, I’m pay too much tax on it. I need a different system here.” They said, “We can arrange it.” And so I said, “And I am looking for more of a long-term partnership in this business, ”They said, “We can arrange that.” And so I was one of only two people that they signed up to be shareholders in the business. And so they arranged it because there was a loop hole in the tax system at the time, they arranged it so that you trade one set of shares for another set of shares at a fixed price and then those traded shares on the stock exchange would become the real value of what you earned, not the price you bought the shares at. And so in the tax system at that time, that incremental increase was not taxable. Guess what God did? He reproduced those shares. For two years in a row, my income doubled and doubled again. And it didn’t matter what they did to my target, my division was the number one and now I had all the responsibilities, sub-Saharan Africa, everything. They just put more and more on my plate and they just try to keep me more busy and they tried to do a whole lot of stuff and I just said, “I have a Covenant.”
And God blessed me so much that when I left the corporate world, they kept paying me for three years after that because of the share pay-out. Because God called me into a ministry. Come on, now you can shout me down because I have been preaching really well. You know, this is my life story. I’m not telling you something I heard from someone else, I am not telling you something, someone else’s testimony, this is my testimony. This is my walk of faith in Covenant. Come on, now. Just like Jacob. And you should be in a place where you say, “Hey, if it can happen to Pastor John, then it can happen to me.” And you should be in the place that I am in. “If it can happen to Brother Jerry, then it can happen to me.” And if someone can stand in a meeting place and say, “Brother Jerry, I am about to sow the biggest seed I’ve ever sown before and it is coming your way,” then I am right there at the front row waiting for someone to do that to me. Why shouldn’t it?
Why should it not? Come on, tell me, why should it not? So, God is giving me my own strategy and I am going to go and strike the ground. Because this is my moment for ‘divine supernatural reproduction’. I’ve had number of them before but this is the biggest one that God is getting ready to do for me. Right now! ‘Immaculate Conception. Divine Reproduction’. I don’t want to get into trouble with other churches about Immaculate Conception so I just said, “Divine reproduction”. Hallelujah!
And so, aren’t you glad you waited for me to finish about, I haven’t finished yet. I still got a little more to go with Laban Syndrome but tomorrow, I am going to be talking about Victories in God. Hallelujah. Tomorrow, morning service is going to be about Victories in God. This afternoon, I finish about Laban Syndrome, God willing.
Thank you for being with me this morning. (I will see you ‘agter middag’! Agter midday! How about, we do an hour and a half break? One thirsty? (Pastor John laughs). Okay, one thirty, we will see you back. One thirty.)
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