This is My Story Part 8: Jacob // Eric Robertson

Betrayal, struggle, wrestling, and redemption. These are the components of a great story. Many of us have been through these seasons. Maybe you are in one of these seasons now. In this message, Pastor Eric Robertson shares the story of Jacob. 

Providence is the tension between my ability to choose my next step and God's ability to choose it for me.

God working behind the scenes to bring about His will and our good, both with and without our participation.

Jacob's story is a story of God's providence, bringing about His will and Jacob's good in the life of someone who lived almost entirely for himself.

·      Jacob's choices tell us something about ourselves: We sometimes would rather take from God what He already wanted to give us.

·      God was with Jacob, but Jacob's decisions had real consequences. God may guide our destinies, but our decisions determine the difficulty/detours.

·      Even when think we have what we want, a fugitive never rests easy. You may be running from God, but in His house is where you belong and Jacob feels this, so this he flees back home...

·      Jacob walks away from a God-encounter with a limp, but also with a new name. Your past is going to leave scars, but your scars don't determine your identity, God does.

·      His whole life, Jacob took blessing he wasn't given. That night he finally asked for one, and he waited, wrestling until morning, to receive it. Peace requires patience. Blessing requires submission. Destiny requires a new name with a new limp.

·      Jacob spent his life taking, but everything he went through led him to this moment of receiving. Every misstep, every poor decision redeemed by God, almost like it was the plan the whole time.

·      God can redeem your pain, your tragedy, and your mistakes. No matter how far of a detour you've taken, God can fix it.

·      Providence doesn't answer the question as to whether something was going to happen along. It does make us more comfortable with saying "I don't know, but I trust Him."

Are you trusting God with your future?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You're listening to the VFC Sermon Podcast. At the end of this episode, please take a moment to download our free VFC Thomasville app, where you can access all of our messages, sermon notes, announcements, and small group lessons. Our app is the easiest way to keep up with everything going on here at VFC. We hope that this message helps you in your walk with Jesus and encourages you to belong, believe, and become.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Good morning, everybody. My name is Pastor Eric. If you don't know me, I'm one of the associate pastors here at VFC. I'm excited to be able to share with you guys this morning in our summer series called This Is My Story, where uh primarily we've been hearing uh the stories of people from our very own VFC family, stories of God's faithfulness and their journey through through pain and through triumph. Have y'all enjoyed this series so far this summer? Awesome. Yeah, yeah. We've heard some from some really excellent uh people. Last week we heard from our elder and house church pastor, Tom Wallace, and he did an excellent job. I was excited to hear that. But kind of sprinkled in between, um, we're also looking at stories uh from people in the Bible gleaning uh spiritual insight from people that live the faith throughout history. Um and this morning I'm gonna be sharing uh the story of Jacob. And it's funny, when when I was asked to speak during this series, I knew exactly who I was gonna talk about. I knew I was gonna talk about Jacob because I feel like of almost any character in the Bible I relate to, it's Jacob. Why? Because Jacob spent his younger years as a scoundrel. Me too. Many of us here know what it's like. And so uh he has a really exciting story, and and there's something really cool that we need to know about Jacob from the outset is that Jacob was related to a few people who were really, really important. Not just related, he would have known these people. Um Jacob's grandfather was Abraham himself, the father of the promise, the one in which God chose, God chose Abraham to bring about his redemptive plan in history. You can take our faith, you can take the promises that we're living in now as New Testament Christians, you can look at our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and you could trace that lineage all the way back to Abraham. And then Abraham had the child of promise in his old age, Isaac. And then Isaac had Jacob. And so Abraham was Jacob's grandfather, and this is gonna be really important to the story because it kind of sets the tone for the tension that Jacob is born into. And when I think of the story of Jacob, there's a word that comes to mind that we don't really use a lot in the modern church language anymore. You may have sung this word in your grandma's uh hymnal at one point in time, but it's not something that we talk about a lot, and that word is providence. Has anybody ever heard that word providence before? Yeah, it's sort of a funny word because when you think about it, it really doesn't provide you an answer for what exactly it is, but it does describe attention that I feel like we've all experienced before in our lives. And essentially what providence is, is it's God working out his will in the world both with and without our participation. Have you ever noticed that before? Have you ever noticed that God tends to do things both with and without you? Now he'd prefer to do them with you, but when God says he's going to do something, he does it. So providence is the tension between my ability to choose my next step and God's ability to choose my direction. Have you ever fumbled around in life making mistake after mistake, only to end up right where God wanted you to in the beginning? And you're asking yourself, now I know I didn't do this. In fact, I actively worked against it, yet here I am? That's God's providence. Providence is the joyful confusion when everything works out despite your best efforts to mess it up. Providence is living in the redemption of the bad and celebrating the things that could have been bad but were not. And Jacob's story is a story of God's providence, God working out his will and his promise through the life of someone who lived almost exclusively for themselves. Jacob's story is a long one. It comprises, in fact, once I started writing them, I was so excited to write this message until I realized, oh my gosh, I've got to somehow summarize 10 chapters from the Old Testament in about 30 minutes, but we're gonna do it. Jacob's story comprises, it's about 10 chapters, but we're gonna look at his life in four stages, and we're gonna gleam insight from the four stages of Jacob's life. And uh his life can be broken up into what I call the four R's: rushing, reaping, wrestling, and reconciling. And you may be wondering, wrestling starts with a W. But I don't say wa wrestling, do I? The first stage of Jacob's life is rushing. And it takes place in Genesis 25. Yeah, I mentioned that Jacob was the grandson of Abraham. The promise of the salvation of the world was given to Abraham. Now, at the time he didn't recognize that. God chose Abraham from the world and told him, I will make you a father of many nations, and through your offspring, the nations of the world would be blessed. The foundation of our salvation is based on the promise that God made to this man named Abraham. He made it to him many times. Genesis 12, Genesis 17. He reaffirms this promise. And now Abraham had no way of really understanding what exactly this promise would entail. He knew it was very important, but now we have this added benefit of looking back in time, and we know that the offspring that God was talking about was none other than Jesus himself. And so the whole weight of God's redemption of humanity from sin and death and darkness rests in this promise. And usually in this culture, and still in a lot of cultures today, when you have something, you pass it down to your children. And a promise from God was as good as silver and gold. And so not only was Abraham going to pass down his sheep and his livestock and his riches, but he was going to pass down this promise to the next generation, primarily the firstborn son, which for Abraham was an easy choice. It was Isaac, the son of the promise. Now he did have another son, but Isaac was the son of the promise. But things get a little bit more complicated for Isaac, because he finds out eventually that he's not just gonna have a firstborn son. His wife Rebekah is gonna become pregnant with twins, Jacob and Esau. So it's literally gonna come down to a photo finish on who is going to inherit this promise from God. Basically, who gets born first? And some, there's something, we know something about the life of Jacob and what kind of person Jacob's going to be even before he's born, because Rebekah is feeling this war inside of her womb. Jacob and Esau are fighting in her womb before they're even born. And she inquires of the Lord in Genesis 25, and God tells her something about her children. It says, And the Lord said, Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger. Now this adds an even bigger issue to an already confusing situation. Not only is Isaac going to have twin boys, which could essentially be decided literally by who was born first, that's who's gonna inherit the promise, but God tells Rebecca, hey, look, I know the cultural thing, but this is what I'm telling you, I'm gonna do. The elder shall serve the younger. In other words, the firstborn son is not going to be the one who inherits this. He's not gonna be the one who's in charge. And so we know from the outset that God has a great and mighty plan for Jacob, the firstborn. Now, Jacob and Esau are born in the Hebrew world, uh, names uh are were more than just uh sounds we made with our mouths to get someone's attention. Names uh were uh descriptions of identity, job descriptions, identifiers, and so Esau literally means hairy, unfortunately, as why he was born hairy. Um I'm glad my parents didn't name me Big Ears. Uh that would have been really bad growing up. It was already bad without the name. But Jacob's name means something different. He wasn't named by a physical descriptor, he was named by what he was doing. The Bible says that when he was born, he was latching on to the heel of his brother, almost trying to steal that place of being firstborn. And so he is named Jacob or Jacob, which means supplanter. Supplanter is someone, a supplanter is someone who takes authority by force. In other words, it's someone who takes something that's not theirs to take. And so this uh we we we learn a lot about Jacob just by his name alone, and this name, supplanter, plays out in this early stage of his life. In fact, probably the most famous story most people know about Jacob is how he stole his brother's inheritance for a bowl of soup. Esau, who was a hunter, goes out on this hunting expedition that's unsuccessful. He obviously comes home famished, he hadn't eaten or drank in days, and he's on his deathbed, and he begs his brother Jacob, please, I'm famished, I'm about to die, please make me a bowl of soup. And Jacob's like, Yeah, I'll do that for your inheritance. And Esau agrees, and we wonder why would Esau give away his birth his birthright for a bowl of soup? And my question is for you is have you ever been really, really hungry before? You make really poor decisions when you're really hungry. And so Jacob steals his brother's birthright or his inheritance, and then later on, he devises a plan to steal something much more important than silver and gold. He devises this plan to steal the blessing of Abraham. And so one day, Isaac in his old age recognizes I need to I need to go ahead and bless my son. We need to get this party started. And so he calls his oldest son to him, Esau, who, you know, culturally is supposed to inherit what the father has. And he tells Esau, Go out, hunt me my favorite game, make me f my favorite meal, bring it back, we'll celebrate, and then I will bless you. Well, Jacob's mom overhears this. And the Bible says earlier in the text that uh Rebekah favored Jacob, but Isaac favored Esau. And so we have to maybe even think that Rebekah would have shared this word of the Lord with Jacob as he grew up. Jacob grew up knowing I'm supposed to be the one that inherits this. This blessing is mine. And so when they overhear that Isaac is getting ready to pass on this very important promise onto Esau, they concoct this plan. And what they do is it's actually quite crazy. Uh Jacob dresses up as Esau. He uh the Bible describes Esau as a hairy, stinky man. Amen. And so he puts on goat skin on his arms and he wears his brother's clothes. And then he does this in Genesis 27. Isaac said, Come near me, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not. Isaac's eyesight was poor at this point in his life. So Jacob went to his father Isaac, who felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. He did not recognize him because his hands were hairy, like his brother's Esau's hands. So he blessed him. He said, Are you really my son Esau? He answered, I am. Then he said, Bring it to me that I may eat my son's game and bless you. So he brought it to him, and he ate, and he brought him wine, and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, Come near and kiss me, my son. So he came near him and kissed him, and he smelled the smell of his garments, and he blessed him. And so at this point in his life, Jacob has stolen two things from his brother. He first steals his inheritance, so the Bible says his birthright, but then he steals this blessing. And when Esau finds out what his brother's done, he's enraged, and so much so that he wants revenge on Jacob, his brother. He wants to kill him. And so when the last time that we see Esau in the story, he is crying out for his brother's revenge. And so Jacob has to flee. So his whole life he has heard this narrative that he was made for greatness, that he was called by God. I'm sure his mother would have shared this word with him that, yeah, look, God told me that the elder was gonna serve the younger, but then he meets this point in time where what he was expecting was not going to happen, and so instead of waiting for it to happen, he decides to steal it. And Jacob's choices tell us something about ourselves. Sometimes we would rather take from God what he already wanted to give us. Here's the thing: you have a call of God on your life. I believe with all of my heart that God has great things planned for you and your relationships and your success and your spiritual life, but God's not going to give it to you until you are ready. God wants you to be the kind of person that can steward the blessing before you inherit the blessing. Because a blessing that you steal is no longer a blessing, it becomes a burden. When you inherit something before it is your time, it becomes a curse. Why? Because you are not yet the kind of person you need to be in order to rightly care for the thing that God has given you. And so God had Jacob in this season of waiting, but Jacob was unwilling to wait, so he decided to steal. A blessing that you steal and a promise that you push doesn't stay a blessing. It becomes a burden. When you inherit something prematurely before you're ready, you don't quite have the maturity to handle what God is doing. And you'll wreck it. And God knows this about us. Jacob, the supplanter, was not yet ready to inherit the promise. And so Jacob runs into the desert with this blessing into 20 years of reaping what he has just sown. Now, this passage, uh, this part of Jacob's life is it's only three chapters, but it's a fairly long portion. It's the Bible spends a lot of time and detail because this portion of Jacob's life covers about 20 years, but I'm going to summarize it in about 90 seconds. Jacob goes off into the desert, right? Which is kind of funny because he's got the inheritance and he's got the blessing, but he doesn't have the peace, so he has to flee. So the question is, does he really have it? So he goes out, uh, the Bible says that he moves west and he sees this, what the Bible describes as a beautiful young woman named Rachel. And at this point in his life, Jacob is the kind of man that gets what he wants, even if he has to steal it. He has this perfect vision of what his life is supposed to look like, and he is going to implement it no matter what. And so he sees Rachel, and it's his desire to marry her. And it's not the 21st century, so he couldn't take her on a date to Chili's and propose to her in the parking lot. So he's got to go and see her father Laban. And her father Laban was a successful shepherd, and he says, Look, your daughter, she's kind of hot. I would love to marry her. Would you be willing to let me marry her? And Laban's like, yeah, I would love to have you know be a part of the family. That's great. Um, usually in that time there was some sort of dowry or some sort of payment. And this payment wasn't like paying for a wife like they were property, but it was an investment in the family. Um, blood for blood, skin for skin. And so Jacob makes this deal with Laban. I will work for you for seven years in order to marry your daughter. And the Bible says that he worked those seven years like it was nothing because he was so in love. Aww. And so he works the seven years, and on comes the wedding. I imagine it was an amazing wedding, and then they had the wedding night, and then the next morning he wakes up to Rachel. No, he wakes up next to her sister Leah. And you may be asking yourself, how in the world did he confuse Rachel for Leah? And I would say, alcohol, probably. And he wakes up next to Leah and he goes to Laban, what have you done? The Bible actually refers to Leah as the one with dull eyes. So he's he's angry. He doesn't even know which ways Leah's looking. It's just I wasn't gonna make that joke, but I did. So he goes to Laban, he's infuriated. He's like, Look, I worked for you for seven years, and I would be really disappointed too, because seven years is what? It's seven years! And Laban says, it would be dishonorable of me to marry my younger daughter before my older daughter is married. The deceiver has been deceived. The one who tricked his father has now been tricked by his father-in-law. The one who dishonored his older brother has now been forced to honor the older sister of the woman he wanted to marry. I'm hoping you're seeing the parallels between what he has sown in his family and what he's reaping in his new family. Because when we talk about the providence of God, yes, we understand that God's will is going to be done with and without our cooperation, but our decisions have real consequences. You will reap what you sow. If you sow death and destruction, you will reap death and destruction. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I've been in ministry for almost 14 years, and it never fails me. I will come across someone whose life is an absolute wreck. They've made poor decisions, they've hung out with the wrong people, they've done the wrong thing with the wrong people, and then they come to church and they're like, Why did God do this to me? And the answer is always the same. God did not do that to you. Why? Because your choices matter. Even in the grand plan that God has for your life, even in his willingness to bear with you and thick and thin, your choices have consequences, both good and bad. And after 20 years of working for Laban, he has had enough. Laban has been a terrible father-in-law. He's tricked him. His house is in disarray. The Bible says that Rachel and Leah were at war with one another. They were jealous of one another. So when one had a kid, the other would have a kid. And when the other would have a kid, the other would have. They were fighting for Jacob's affection through childbearing, left and right, and all of a sudden they've got a dozen kids. The wife's not happy. The father-in-law is stealing from them, and Jacob is done. And he says this to Rachel and Leah. He says, I see that your father does not regard me as favorably as he did before. That's a nice way to say it. But the God of my father has been with me. I want you, I want to notice something. There's something that Jacob recognizes that even in the midst of his disobedience to God, God has still been with him. God has not left him. But here's the thing: God is not Jacob's God. This is something you'll notice if you read the Old Testament a lot. These people that we think were like heroes of the faith spend a majority of their time in disobedience to the Lord. And to me that's kind of hopeful because it means I got a shot. But every time he refers to Yahweh for three quarters of his story, he refers to Yahweh as the God of my father. Not his God, but the God of his father. He says, You know that I have served your father with all of my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me. Even in the midst of our disobedience, God is still for us. God never leaves us. There is a blessing that rests on your life. There is a protection that rests on your life. And yeah, you may not be seeing the full benefit of it, but even in our waywardness, God bears with us and protect us. Even when we're reaping the consequences of the bad decisions that we have made, by God, He's still with us. And that's good news. The cheater has been cheated, the deceiver has been deceived. The disrespectful has been disrespected. The bill is coming due for Jacob. And let me tell you something. In this world, the bill always comes due. God has been with Jacob, but Jacob's decisions had real consequences. See, God may guide our destinies, but our decisions determine our detours. God may guide your trajectory, but you're figuring out, you're in charge of how long and how hard it is to get there. And here's the thing, I'm just going to say this pastorally, this idea of providence is kind of a messy deal because there's so many ditches to get into. But I believe that God does have a plan and trajectory in your life, a call, but I also believe that you can spend your entire life sitting in a detour and never take hold of what God has for you. You may have a general protection on your life. You may have food to eat and air to breathe, but that's far from all the things that God has called you to have when you're living inside of His promise. Even when we think we have what we want, a fugitive never rests easy. It's funny, I'm really into like true crime podcasts. I especially love uh like fugitives, man. It's just amazing to me how someone can live under the radar for decades, you know, in especially in this culture. And every time they get caught, they tell you something. It's the same story every time a fugitive gets caught. I was relieved because they never rested easy. When you are living a life of disobedience to the Lord, you may have tried to pacify yourself with success, you may have tried to pacify yourself with relationships, with substances, with pride, with stuff, but you will never rest easy in the house that you built, because it's the house of God, is where you belong. And so Jacob is feeling this pressure, he's feeling this unhappiness. He spent 20 years reaping the consequences of his own bad decisions, and he's ready to flee once again, but this time he's ready to flee home. But here's the thing: he has a debt he has to pay. There's a price on his head by his brother Esau, and this is a price that Jacob might even be willing to pay. So Jacob packs up his things and he starts heading east again back to the homeland. He packs up all of his sheep. He's actually, even in the midst of all this turmoil, he's been fairly successful working for Laban. He's managed to acquire a really large flock and servants and all of these things, and so he packs up like the Beverly Hillbillies, and he starts heading back home. And before he gets to Esau, he's camped out right outside of the homeland and he's got a plan. He's gonna try to butter Esau up a little bit. And so he takes a good portion of his flock, he takes some gifts, some silver and gold, and he sends it with one of his servants, and he tells his servants, I want you to take these gifts, I want you to give them to my brother Esau. And when you get there, I want you to tell Esau that these gifts are from your servant Jacob. And that is a completely flipped script from how things left. When he left, he was trying to be Lord, but when he's trying to return, he's like, Hey, Esau, I'm your servant. Remember, it's your servant, Jacob. Because here's the reality: the things that you try to steal from God were never yours to begin with. The title, the inheritance, the blessing that Jacob thought he had, he never really had. Why? Because it had never been bestowed upon him by God. He tried to build a life for himself, and so he sends these gifts, and the night before he goes to Esau's camp or homestead, he has another encounter, a very interesting encounter with God, our third R. It says Jacob was left alone. This is Genesis 32, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket. That's what I do when I feel like I'm not going to win, smack him in the hip and run. And uh Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, Let me go, for the day is breaking. But Jacob said, I will not let you go until you bless me. So he said to him, What is your name? And he said, Jacob. Then the man said, You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed. Now that word Israel, it means to strive with God or to wrestle with God. Verse 30, I don't have it on the board, but it says, So Jacob called the place Penil, saying, For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved. So he wrestles with this man, and after he wrestles and receives this new identity and receives this blessing from this man, he recognizes this man not just as any old man, but as wrestling with God himself. And so before Jacob can walk into reconciliation, both with his brother and with his own life, he's got to wrestle with God. And I find this very uh timely because Jacob has spent his whole life wrestling. When he was in the womb, he was wrestling with his brother Esau. When he got out of the womb, he was wrestling with his father-in-law Laban. And now he's finally wrestling with God. But he's not just wrestling with God, he's wrestling with himself. He is having the come to Jesus moment of all come to Jesus moments. And if you know what that is, you know that come to Jesus moments rarely involve Jesus. It's about we're gonna lock this door, we're gonna say what we're gonna say, and we're not gonna leave here until all has been said. And so Jacob is wrestling not only with God, but he's wrestling with his decisions. He's wrestling with his identity. His striving, which has started at birth, is now completed in his wrestling match with God. He is done fighting. But this was not just a physical battle that Jacob was fighting. This was a spiritual and an emotional one. In fact, the prophet Hosea, who is sort of talking about this encounter centuries later, sort of interprets this passage like this. In the womb, he tried to supplant his brother. And in his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed. He wept and sought his favor. He met him at Bethel and there he spoke with him. He says he wept and sought his favor. And so as Jacob is wrestling, we understand he's going through this intensely emotional event where he's really fighting with his own failures. But God gives him a new identity, and he gives him a new limp. And here's the thing consequences are real. And you do have to pay the piper. And you will develop scars throughout your life, some of which you caused, others just happened to you without explanation. But here's the cool reality: your scars don't determine your destiny or your identity. God does. It doesn't matter what the world has to say about you. You may have been born the supplanter, but you can be reborn in the image of Jesus. You may have been born into this world with a poor lot in life, poor upbringing, bad decisions, but you can be reborn in new life in Jesus. And that's the good news that we have. His whole life, Jacob took blessings. He took them. But during this encounter, even though he was wrestling with God, I want to point something out. He asked for one this time. And he was patient. I will not leave until you bless me. See, Jacob is learning a valuable lesson about how God bestows blessings upon people. You can't take a blessing from God. You must submit to him and wait because it's in the submission, it's in the waiting for what God is going to do that you are formed into the kind of person that can handle the blessing. There's a process that you have to undergo, and the more that you fight the process, the longer the process is. And so Jacob had 20 years of catching up to do, so he ends up having to have a wrestling match with God. But sometimes it's in the wrestling with God that we learn something about ourselves. I'm going to tell you, man, I love my devotional time with God, but there are some mornings it does seem like a wrestling match. It's like, yes, I do know this about myself. I love the word that Amy shared. Like, Lord, just let me sit in this for a little while. It's like, no, get up. We learn something about ourselves when we wrestle with God. See, peace requires patience, and blessing requires submission. And destiny requires sometimes a new name with a new limp. So he has this encounter of wrestling, and then he moves into the final stage: reconciling. This is the moment that this whole story has been leading to, where he finally gets to meet Esau. Remember, the last time Esau saw Jacob, he wanted to kill him, and rightfully so. And I'd have to imagine Esau has had 20 years just stewing on this. They didn't have like Instagram reels to forget about the day. I mean, every time he looks at his mother and father, he's reminded of how his brother hurt him. Every time he walks past his brother's mat on the floor, he's reminded of what he stole from him. And so Esau's had 20 years to plan this revenge. And so Jacob packs up his things and he's basically like, let's see what happens. And so he starts walking towards the homestead and he sees Esau in the distance. And I want to point out that Jacob is not walking alone. He's walking with a collection of his scars. He's walking with the children born of Rachel and Leah's strife, who would later become the 12 tribes of Israel. He's walking with this limp that he just got the night before. See, when Esau sees Jacob, Jacob is not the same man who left. And Esau recognizes this. Esau said, What do you mean by all this company that I met? Basically saying, Man, these are my nieces and nephews. This rocks. Jacob answered, To find favor with you, my Lord. But Esau said, I have enough, my brother. Keep what you have for yourself. And Jacob said, No, please, if I find favor with you, then accept my present from my hand. For truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God, since you have seen me, received me with such favor. And Jacob would know what the face of God looks like, because just the night before he was wrestling. And so they have this beautiful reconciliation, and Jacob is able to come back. But I want you to know that Jacob's scars were working in his favor. The children born of strife and jealousy brought excitement and joy to the heart of Esau. The limp that he saw with on Jacob brought compassion on Esau. So God can even use our mistakes and our disobedience to bring us back to the place that we should have never left. And that's the providence of God. The providence of God is that God is actively working for my good, even when I'm working against him. And that's good news. And that doesn't give us permission to continue to work against God because I'll tell you right now, you can spend the rest of your life in a detour, or you can repent and submit and allow God to bring you to the place that you should have been at the whole time. It's like on your GPS when you miss the turn and it says recalculating. All paths are leading to the place where God wants you, but how long you get there and if you get there is determined by your choices. That's the joyful confusion that I was talking about. Twelve sons born out of jealousy, all with individual callings of their own, a limp born from a wrestling match, but none of it looks like a failure anymore. It looks like transformation. God has a way of making even our scars look like they should have been there the whole time. Using our bad decisions, using our disobedience, and even using the things that happened to us that we didn't ask for to shape and form us into his image. Later on in the story, Genesis 35, I don't have this on the board, but Jacob has one more encounter with God. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall spring from you. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you. Once Jacob submitted to the formation process, once Jacob had patience for the calling, once he gave up chasing after the blessing and just started chasing after God, it was then that God bestowed this promise upon him. And that's why when God reveals himself throughout the Old Testament, he says, I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that should be encouragement to you because Jacob was a scoundrel. But God took a scoundrel and made him a man of God, and he could do the same to you. He can take your mistakes, he can take your detours, and he can make it look like it was supposed to happen that way the whole time. That's just how good he is. He can take the things you didn't choose. The sickness, the grief, the death, the loss, the things that you didn't actively work for. All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose. So if you love God and you realize you are called according to his purpose, that's a promise. All things will work out for you. It may not happen the way that you would do it. It may not happen the way that you want it, but it's going to happen. See, that's the thing. When you take destiny into your own hands, you got two options. Either it's going to happen or it won't. When you leave your future into the hands of God, there's only one option. It's going to happen. God can redeem your pain, your tragedy, and your mistakes, no matter how far of a detour you've taken. See, providence doesn't answer the question of whether or not something was going to happen all along. But it does give you the grace to say, I don't know, but I trust him. And so my question for you this morning is are you trusting God with your future? I look out here and I see so many callings. I see so much good. I see the Lord all over everybody here. And I know you know it. And I know there's people here that are frustrated. Like, man, when is this thing, like, even something simple? It doesn't have to be some big promotion, man. It could just be peace or joy or a relationship or whatever it is that you've been believing God for. When is it going to happen? And my only encouragement to you is trust him. And it seems like sort of a pat answer, but it'll happen exactly when God needs it to happen the way that God wants it to happen. And that's all for your good. Just don't grow weary. Don't try to take life into your own hands. Don't try to force a blessing so that it becomes a burden. Please stand, Winnie. Think about, man, where where are you at? Maybe you're in one of the four stages that we found Jacob, where maybe you're rushing through trying to take hold of something that's not yet yours. Maybe you're in a season of reaping the consequences of some not so awesome decisions that you've made. Maybe you're actively wrestling with God and moving towards reconciliation. Wherever you're at, I want you to know that God is with you. If you're rushing, have patience. If you're reaping, take it. If you're wrestling, ask God to bless you. If you're reconciling, enjoy. Say, dear Heavenly Father, I trust you with my future. I put my plans in your hands, and I trust that as I'm obedient to your will and your way, all things, all things will work out for my good and for your kingdom. So Lord, I give you my past, my present, and my future. And I trust you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

Thanks for listening to the VFC Podcast. If you live in the Thomasville area, we would love for you to connect with us in person. For more information about our weekly gatherings, including service times and directions, you can visit us at VFC Thomasville.org.