Genesis 26:34-28:9 - Fighting For God’s Blessing
Main Idea: God’s blessing is not found in human conflict, but in His character.
Obedience, Not Self-Centeredness (Gen. 26:34-35)
Honesty, Not Lying Schemes (Gen. 27:1-29)
Undeserved Forgiveness, Not Bitter Hatred (Gen. 27:30-41)
Selfless Love, Not Manipulative Pushing (Gen. 27:42-28:5)
Godly Wisdom, Not Human Solutions (Gen. 28:6-9)
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed By Apple Podcasts)
We are continuing our series in the Book of Genesis, chapters 25 through 36, in a series entitled Family Feud, looking at the way that we naturally live our lives as seen in the lives of Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Esau, and all of
Jacob's kids that we'll meet in a couple of chapters. And we're going to see that the world, our natural selves have one way of living, but that way of living is not what God has called us to.
Instead, God has called us to the way of Jesus, that the way we encounter fighting, conflict within our lives, within our families, our churches, our jobs, ought to be different than the way that the world does conflict.
And we're going to see that in some really startling detail today, and I'm looking forward to it. Today's sermon is entitled Fighting for God's Blessing. Fighting for God's Blessing.
If you were here last week, this general sermon outline accidentally got printed and put in your thing. So if last week you were like, man, pastor just pulled out a whole different message.
It was, it accidentally printed this week's, which we tweaked a little bit. So you might have gotten a little bit of a sneak peek. But today we're in Genesis chapter 26 and verse 34 through chapter 28 and verse 9.
So it's one story. And the title is Fighting for God's Blessing. What do you consider to be worth fighting for?
Is your family worth fighting for? Your kids, your job, your country, your favorite sports team? I heard, I don't know if our resident Yankees fan is here today, because you're a Red Sox fan, right?
OK, good. Because I heard, oh, are you a Yankees fan? Oh, OK, sorry.
I thought you raised your hand, and I was like, I will be praying for you. That's got to be a hard time. People have things that they fight over and things that they think are important.
The truth is, most of the time, we don't actually have to fight for things in our lives. Sometimes it happens, but most of the time, that's not the way that our lives go. But the posture that we adopt tends to be one of battling and fighting.
We think there's a good life, there's a particular way that we want our life circumstances and events and relationships to go. And we tend to think this other person is stopping me from living the good life that I am wanting to live.
They're stopping me from experiencing all the happiness and fulfillment that I want in this area of my life. In a home, this could play out where you think your spouse is the enemy that is keeping you from the good life.
In a workplace, you could be sure that a different boss or a different co-worker would usher in the paradise of Eden in your job. So you fight with the person keeping you from living your best life now.
That person that serves in a particular ministry at your church, they're an enemy because they ate a crumbly snack, and now your idyllic perfection in your classroom or your thing, now it's covered in crumbs, and the world has ended.
Maybe you lash out on all your family members because they don't bear the same grudge that you have against a cousin. We think people and fighting against people will get us the good life, the blessed life.
But is that the way that God wants us to, if you will, get the good life? Absolutely not. Is our selfishness, our fighting, our plans for what would make us happy, what our Creator and Savior has in mind?
No.
Today, in Genesis 26 through 28, we're going to see through the story of a family fight more than 3,000 years ago, that God's blessing is not found in human conflict, but in his character.
God's blessing is not found in human conflict, but in his character. That is, we discover what we were made for, our purpose for existence, our joy and fulfillment in who God is, and in becoming more like him through our relationship with Jesus.
Will you pray with me as we look today, fighting for God's blessing? Dear Jesus, thank you for your goodness to us. Thank you that though we fail, though we try to establish ourselves through conflict, you are endlessly good and gracious to us.
God, thank you for what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross, that we are never cast out. Lord, that we are never further away from you than just a prayer. God, I pray that you would help convince our hearts of this truth from your word.
That the way to get the good life is by knowing, living, and acting like you through our relationship with Jesus. It is not found in battling and duking it out with other people. God, I pray that you would be glorified in your church this morning.
Lord, if there's someone here today that doesn't know you as their savior, I pray that today would be the day that they choose to follow you. We love you. We pray all of this in your name.
Amen.
In fighting for God's blessing, if God's blessing is found not in human conflict, but in God's character, we should probably know what God's character is.
And the first way that we see this in Genesis 26 verses 34 and 35 is that God's character is obedience, not self-centeredness. In Genesis 26 verses 34 and 35, we read this.
When Esau was 40 years old, he took as his wives— okay, so he's supposed to be taking wives? Nope, we're already a couple words in, we're off. As his wives, Judith, daughter of Beirut, the Hephaite, and Beisemath, daughter of Elan, the Hephaite.
They made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah. So here Esau starts off the story, and we see an initial rejection of God's design for marriage, which is one man and one woman in one committed covenant relationship for life.
That's God's design, and instead Esau does what he wants to do, what would make him happy, and so he becomes a polygamist. Hopefully, that's not the way that you guys are trying to solve your problems today. Thankfully, it's still illegal in America.
I encourage you, don't become a polygamist.
That's not good.
But for you and I today, how often do we ignore what God has said, so that we can do what makes us happy? God says to love someone, and we despise and resent them.
God tells us to share the gospel, and we hide it so that we don't have to be uncomfortable telling people the best news ever.
When it comes to getting God's blessing for your life, do you think that you will receive the Lord's blessings as you obey him?
Or do you think that if you insist on your own importance, your own wishes, your preferences, that that's how you'll get the blessing of God? In our world today, this is how most people try to get what they want.
They think that if they complain enough, if they make a scene, if they whine to the manager, if they pester mom and dad enough, they can get whatever their heart desires. The problem is that we're not called to live for ourselves.
We are called to live for others. Paul told the Philippian Church, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider the other person as more important than yourselves.
Everyone should look out not to their own interests, but rather to the interests of others.
We see this modeled in how Jesus lived, that even as we think of the term obedience, we might think God's character and we go, well, who would God have to obey?
But Jesus, when he lived on this earth, he obeyed his heavenly father, and he even obeyed his earthly parents, his mother and his stepfather Joseph. Jesus, in the garden, prayed, not my will, but thine. He was not self-centered.
He was God-centered, obediently doing what God had said, and he was others-centered, looking out for people's souls, rebuking sin in his disciples and in the Pharisees, and caring for those that he came across.
God's character is obedience to the Word of God. It is not rejection of it. And Jesus was not self-centered.
He was others-centered. So this week, when it comes to conflicting ideas and words and actions with other people, will you choose to be obedient to God like Jesus, or will you choose to be self-centered?
Then next, in chapter 27, verses 1 through 29, as it's prefaced with Esau's self-centeredness and his disobedience, then we come to this crucial point.
If you guys remember a few weeks ago, when Rebekah was pregnant with the twins, with Jacob and Esau, God had told her that the younger would be in charge of the older, that the older would serve the younger.
There was already a promised order and blessing from God on Jacob before either of these twins had been born.
And we saw, I believe it was in that very first sermon that we went through in this series, we saw how Jacob connived to get Esau to, if you will, sign away his birthright for a bowl of soup. So Jacob has already been scheming.
His name means trickster or heel grabber. It's one who trips someone else up in a race. And he does this again in verses 1 through 29.
I'm not going to read through all of the passage for today, but I'll kind of give you guys the story. So Isaac is old. He's very old at this point.
And he thinks that he doesn't have much time left.
And so he wants to give his family blessing, the blessing that came down from the Lord to Abraham, of the promise of the Messiah, that seed, that descendant, offspring, that would eventually be Jesus Christ.
And all of the blessings that came along with it for that particular family, Isaac was going to give that to his oldest son, who, as we learned in that first week, Isaac loved Esau because he did some great cooking, and Isaac loved the meat that Esau
hunted. And so Isaac told Esau, I want you to go out and I want you to get me some of that good venison that my soul loves and then I'll give you a blessing. So Esau goes out to the field and he's hunting, and Rebecca overhears.
And Rebecca has always loved Jacob more than Esau. This is not the way, just by the way, to be a parent. I see like Mike and Amy, you guys can't be like, man, I love Abram or I love Milo, but I just really despise the other ones.
You can't do that. That's not good. Rod and Melissa, you can't be like, listen, I love Emma, but I just, I don't really care for Seth or, you know, Kayla, you know, it depends on the day.
You can't do that. It's not the way to live. The really sad thing is, though we joke about that, that's a little funny.
Often that can be the way that we behave. Maybe we wouldn't say, I love one more than the other, but that's how our actions are. We spend more time, more affection on one than on the other.
And I'm thankful that God doesn't play favorites with his kids, that he loves me just as much as he loves Roger, or just as much as he loves Roy.
And I'm not getting God's second best in the relationship, that he has some better plan that he's given to someone else. But God loves us each and he shows no favoritism. So let that be how we interact with our kids or with our grandkids.
So, Rebecca loves Jacob, and she has a master plan. She goes, okay, Jacob, I want you to go grab one of the sheep. You're going to kill, actually it might be a goat, if I remember in the story.
He says, yes, two goats. She says, I want you to kill these goats. I'm going to prepare it.
Your dad is old and he doesn't actually, he's not able to differentiate the taste of venison versus goat anymore. So, I'm just going to season this thing up. He'll never even know.
And then you will pretend to be your brother, because your dad's eyesight is so bad now, he'll never be able to tell, and you will get the blessing through this line. Jacob doesn't say, no, like that'd be wrong. How can I lie to my father?
He goes, oh, he's going to know that it's me, because my brother is so hairy and I'm just smooth skinned. It's way too much. It's a problem.
Rebecca's like, don't worry about it. Just listen to me, do everything I tell you. I'm going to take the skin of these goats, and I'm going to stick it to your arms.
How hairy do you have to be that like goat skin would be a great substitute for your arm? I haven't looked at many of y'all's arms, but I'm hoping it's not that bad. So, that's what Rebecca tells Jacob to do.
Jacob listens to her, and so he goes in, he gives the food, and Isaac's like, hey, how are you back so fast? And Jacob, I assume, putting on some sort of affected voice to pretend like he's Esau.
And he's like, the Lord your God has blessed me, and I found a deer as soon as I went out.
So Isaac was like, okay.
So he has Jacob come a little closer, and he's like, listen, the voice, this sounds like Jacob. So he has Jacob come close, and he feels his arms, and he feels the hairy goat skin, and he goes, oh, it is Esau.
Like something's wrong with Esau's voice, but this is obviously Esau because of how hairy he is. So Isaac, he eats the food, and he gives a blessing to Jacob.
He says this, oh, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. May God give to you from the dew of the sky and from the richness of the land an abundance of grain and new wine.
May peoples serve you and nations bow in worship to you. Be master over your relatives. May your mother's sons bow in worship to you.
Those who curse you will be cursed, and those who bless you will be blessed. The scheme works. But they didn't get God's blessing.
They got Isaac's, but they didn't arrive at the good life in the way that God intended. So as we think about God's character, not human conflict being the way that we get God's blessing, God's character is honesty, not lying schemes.
God had already promised the blessing on Jacob. Rebekah and Jacob did not have to go through this whole process in order to manufacture what God had already promised.
It can seem easier in your life and mine to hedge on honesty, because then we might not get everything that we're hoping for. If we lie on our taxes, or rather if we're honest on our taxes, Uncle Sam takes more stuff from us.
If we're honest with our spouse, we're gonna be in trouble for that purchase or that action. So we think that the way forward is not to tell the truth, so we can enjoy the good life.
But that's not God's character, and that's not behavior that he blesses. Instead, even if it means that you lose some things, choose to tell the truth.
Kids, when you've messed up, when you've had that terrible grade, or made some really bad choices with that one friend, be honest with your parents. Bring it out into the light, and God will bless you for telling the truth.
Adults, some of your relationships are as fake as a social media post because you are refusing to be honest with the other person. You're carrying hurt against them, and they don't even know about the bad blood because you can't be honest with them.
Have courage. Take the risk of losing that friendship by refusing to live in lies and speak the truth kindly with them. Jesus could have lied when he was asked if he was the Messiah.
He wouldn't have died on the cross if he had. But he plainly declared himself to be the divine son of man, the rightful ruler of humanity, and because of his honesty, he died for our sins.
Not only that, but Jesus loved people enough to tell them the truth. He told Peter that he was listening to Satan when he tried to convince Christ not to die on the cross.
Jesus told a rich young ruler that he needed to repent of greed before he could follow Jesus.
He tells you and I that there is no other way to God except through belief in what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross, dying for our sins, buying the redemption of our souls. It's not a popular belief, but it is the truth.
So choose in your life, in your interactions this week with other people, don't live in lying schemes, choose to live in honesty, even if it means that you lose some things or don't get what you want.
Then next, we are called to live in undeserved forgiveness, like God gives, not bitter hatred. As you might imagine, there in verse number 30, Jacob gets the blessing and he books it out.
As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had left the presence of his father Isaac, his brother Esau arrived from his hunting.
He had made the food and so he said, Hey, dad, get up, enjoy the food, and then you can give me the blessing. Isaac goes, wait a second, who are you? And he's like, I'm Esau.
Who else would I be? He said, I just gave someone a blessing. So who in the world was that?
Esau goes, it was my trickster brother, Jacob.
You should probably not do that.
Don't, don't whack the pulpit guys. He goes, oh, it was my trickster brother, Jacob. And then he goes, well, okay, dad, do you have any blessing that's left for me?
Do you have any of these like words of equipping and promise that are left for me? He goes, no, I gave Jacob everything, all of the blessing, all of the promises that I could give. So then Esau, he's really tearful.
He wanted this blessing and Isaac gives him everything that he had, which was, look, your dwelling will be away from the richness of the land, away from the dew of the sky above. You will live by your sword and you will serve your brother.
But when you rebel, you will break his yoke from your neck. Basically, well, you've got a life that you're going to live and it's going to be at enmity with your brother.
And we can see this played out through all of Jacob's descendants and all of Esau's descendants, that Esau's descendants were consistently trying to do harm to the children of Israel, raiding parties, all sorts of, I'd say, fun stuff, but it's
definitely not fun stuff. As they go through, that's the promise that's given to Esau. So as a result, we are told that Esau harbored hatred. He held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him.
And Esau determined in his heart, the days of mourning for my father are approaching, then I will kill my brother Jacob. He goes, okay, I'm really mad at Jacob for stealing all of these things that I thought belonged to me.
And so one day, as soon as dad dies, then I'm going to kill him. There is bitter hatred. And to be fair, Jacob here has stolen from Esau.
Jacob doesn't really deserve forgiveness at this point in the story. Now, that doesn't mean that Esau should be planning on murdering him. But the truth is, Jacob here does not deserve forgiveness.
Forgiveness is one of the hardest actions that we are called to be like our God in, because at its core, forgiveness is a declaration of faith in God's righteous justice. Forgiveness is saying, I'm forgiving you.
I'm choosing to release my desire for you to get yours or for you to be punished. You are no longer on trial in my heart.
I can release the need to feel those feelings, because I believe that God will bring perfect justice, and so I don't have to worry about it in my soul. In forgiveness, we say God's got it, so I don't have to worry about it.
Today, if you're here, you're not a Christian, you don't believe in God, you really don't have an ultimate reason to forgive other people. But if you are a Christian, you have been forgiven of every sin by God, and he commands us to forgive others.
Jesus did not have to forgive us. We have all messed up in a thousand ways and in countless situations. We have righteously earned God's desire for justice against the evil that we've perpetrated on other people in his good world.
But he did not operate according to what we deserved.
He gives forgiveness freely to every person that will repent from their sin, repent from choosing the direction of their own life and eternity, and for those that will instead turn to Jesus completely in faith, believing in his forgiveness for their
sin and accepting him as the Lord, the ruler of their life. In your life, you might feel like forgiveness will stop you from having the good life.
But the truth is the perpetual bitterness, the resentment that you have against another person, it will not keep you safe. Instead, the writer of Hebrews says that a root of bitterness springs up and it defiles many other people around us.
So instead of harboring bitter hatred, choose undeserved forgiveness, forgive like Jesus, and find out that leaving justice in the hands of God is the best possible solution. We think if I forgive this person, it will mean that they get away with it.
But the truth is that God is the judge, and God has never acquitted anyone just for the fun of it. There is divine punishment for every evil that has ever been done.
For your evil and for my evil, that divine punishment was met out on Christ on the cross. And for every person that has inflicted harm on others, the choice really is the punishment will be paid.
It will either be paid by Jesus on the cross 2,000 years ago, or it will be paid by you. So when we choose to forgive others, we say, God, I recognize what Jesus went through on the cross.
If this other person that I met odds with, if they're a Christian, their sins have already been paid for.
For me to say that wasn't enough, the punishment of Jesus on the cross was not sufficient enough harm for this sin, frankly, it just downplays what Christ accomplished for us.
And it denies what he went through to the point that Jesus on the cross even said, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they do.
And Jesus experienced that isolation from God, that he underwent separation so that you and I would never have to.
Then, forth today, if we're going to be like God, and in our conflict and our circumstances choose God's character instead of human conflict, it means that we need to pursue selfless love, not manipulative pushing.
So, in the end of chapter 27, in the beginning part of chapter 28, Rebecca knows Esau is really, really bitter against Jacob. He wants to kill him.
So, she tells Jacob, your brother wants to kill you, go to my family, like go to my brother's house that's over more in the Mesopotamian region, kind of near what would later be Babylon. Go back there, and I want you to chill there.
Your brother will eventually cool down, and everything will be fine. Then she goes to Isaac and says, listen, you know how much you hate Esau's wives? And I hate them too.
They are just the worst, and it's just gonna kill me if Jacob has one of these wives as well.
So, let's send him back to, you know, kind of our ancestral grounds over there in Babylon, and he'll be able to find a wife that isn't terrible like one of Esau's wives. Every part of what I just said is so messed up.
This is not the way to interact with your husband because either she's lying to Isaac about the reason that Jacob's going, or she's lying to Jacob about the real reason that she's wanting. In any case, you can't tell what Rebekah's end goal is.
Other than that, everything that she's trying to manipulate to do is happening. And here there is just manipulative pushing. There's not a selfless love.
She's not being fully honest with Jacob, or she's not being fully honest with Isaac, or maybe a little bit of both. We don't even know from the passage if she ever came clean with Isaac, that she had manipulated it so that the blessing went to Jacob.
There's just so much lies. There are so many lies in this passage. How Rebecca here treats Jacob and Isaac is manipulative.
Rebecca wanted Jacob to marry into a particular clan, but she doesn't actually tell him that. She tells him one thing, run from Esau, and then tells his father another thing, the marriage plan.
And then she tricks the father into accomplishing what she wants, which is Jacob away from Esau, and she gets everything she wants. Jacob is alive, and he is married to a non-Hephite. But we never see her talk to Jacob again.
Jacob goes, but she never gets to see her favorite son again. She gets what she thought was best, but she totally left God out.
I don't know if you guys remember from the first message in the series, Isaac, he's undergoing the same barrenness that Abraham and Sarah experienced at the beginning of their story.
But it says that Isaac talked to God, and God was receptive to his prayer, and he answered. Rebecca had questions, and she talked to God, and God answered.
But as we reach a couple decades later in their life, they've stopped talking to God, and they just keep making their own plans. Other people are pawns to be manipulated. They have totally neglected to go ask God what they should do.
For us, the call is selflessly love others, seek the face of God, don't just try your own plans in your own ways. If you're trying today to manipulate someone else into a decision, stop it. Put it to them plainly.
I want you to do blank. I think it'd be wise. I think it would be in your best interest.
Here's all the benefits of it. But even if you don't do that, I still love you. And then choose to still love them, regardless of whether or not they accomplish your will.
Our relationships would be so much better if we weren't consistently trying to manipulate each other. If married couples would just start selflessly giving of their best efforts and affection, regardless of whether or not their spouse earned it.
If you freely offered the friendship, with healthy boundaries, of course, but without the carrot on the end of the stick, or the secret motive. Love freely offers people a relationship. It does not demand a relationship.
Manipulation says, if you do this, then I'll love you. Love says, I want you to do this, but I can't make you, and it's your choice. This is at its root the difference between religion and a relationship with God.
Religion says, if you do all of these things, you do all the items on the good works list, you don't do anything on the bad works list, you are set for life. But God says, I want you to live like me, because that will bring you blessing.
That's what you were created for. But because you can't be perfect like me, I have sent Jesus to take all of your condemnation and to give you forgiveness and relationship and my Holy Spirit, even though you can't be good enough.
Religion says, do this and you'll be safe in the afterlife. God says, Jesus did this, so you can have a relationship with me now and forever. And choosing selfless love or manipulative pushing in your relationships with other people.
Is it, if you do this, you get my love. If you do this, I'll be happy with you. Or are you freely offering the relationship?
If you are a reader, one great book that helped me out with this was the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend.
And I got to go through that with a friend a few years ago. It was a great book to look at how to set up healthy boundaries in your life and to stop the constant manipulation of other people.
That's just one book that I thought might be helpful for your reference. Then, very lastly today, if we're going to interact with the good life, it comes through God's character, not through human conflict.
So we need to seek godly wisdom, not human solutions. Unfortunately, as we look at the life of Rebecca and the life of Jacob, this is what they do time and time and time again.
Or in these last couple of verses, this time around, it's actually Esau that does this in chapter 28 and verses 6 through 9. Esau noticed that Isaac blessed Jacob and sent him to Padden Aram to get a wife there.
When he blessed him, Isaac commanded Jacob, do not marry a Canaanite girl. And Jacob listened to his father and mother and went to Padden Aram. Just clarification note here real quick.
This is not because Canaanite girls had some like undesirable quality. They weren't of pure enough blood, whatever. This is these are people that do not worship our God.
And so don't intermarry with someone that does not share your core faith conviction. This is something that is even echoed in the New Testament.
Not in a don't marry this particular tribe or clan of people, but in don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. So, then in verse 8, Esau realized that his father Isaac disapproved of the Canaanite women. Okay, we're starting off, okay.
So Esau went to Ishmael and married, in addition to his other wives, Mahalaf, daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, she was the sister of Nebuchadnezzar. If you guys have two wives, do you think the solution is find a third wife? No.
This is terrible decision making. This is human solution to the problem. At no point in this process has Esau ever talked to God or cared about what God's thoughts were.
I think about godly wisdom and the character of God, and I think about Jesus on this earth, that he didn't even rely on his own perfect, infallible wisdom. He didn't go by his will when he was here on earth.
Instead, over and over again, we find him praying. In circumstance after circumstance, he chose to seek the Father's will, not his own will. I think how many times do you and I, we're not asking God what we should do about this conflict.
We're not asking God what we should do about this decision that's coming up, or this financial purchase. And we think, I'll be fine. I'm smart enough.
I've got this. I can fix this relationship. I can solve this problem.
I can make whatever choice that I want to, and I'll be fine, because I'm smart enough. I don't need to seek out God's wisdom on this. I don't need to pray.
I don't need to seek Godly council or advice. And that's just not the way that it's intended to go. If even Jesus didn't do what he wanted to do, why do we think that that's how we should live?
We're a church, and so I'll give an illustration of this in the church world. God has given us specific directions in His word on what He wants His church to do.
He has commanded us to meet together, at least each week, to hear the preaching of the word of God, to sing the praises of God, to pray together to God, to fellowship with the people of God, and to partake in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's
Supper together. That's what He's called us to do. That's His wisdom.
We believe that as we obey the word of God, as we invite family and friends and neighbors and coworkers, that God will continue to save the souls of people as He's done for 2,000 years.
I want to encourage and challenge you guys as my church family today. Believe in the power of God's church. Believe in the power of the preached word of God.
Believe in the power of singing praise to God with your brothers and sisters in the Lord. Believe in the power of the God we pray to.
Believe in the power of unsaved people seeing the love and unity of Jesus' church members and being convinced that God exists because they see Him in us.
Believe in the power of baptism in the Lord's Supper, that as we follow our Savior in observing those ordinances, they picture what Jesus did for us, and that each of us individually follow our Savior in observing those.
We preach the gospel message through them. Power is not found in programs, it's found in the Holy Spirit of God, who gave us the word of God to tell us what to do. One pastor put it like a wedding registry or a new kid, but what do you call that?
A baby registry. Oh yeah, I've had babies before, I promise. A baby registry.
There's the items that are on the registry list that God has placed there. He's not looking for you to buy random items that he has not asked for. It's not that he's not smart enough to go, oh, thank you for doing that.
I didn't realize that I also needed that, but thank you for picking that out for me. God has his registry list. He is not asking us to be more creative than him.
Some people, in a genuine attempt to try and maximize church attendance so that more people hear the gospel, they've sometimes swerved from what God has commanded us to do and tried out their own solutions.
They've said preaching shouldn't be as much about the word of God. It should be about how to make your life better or how to make your culture exactly what you want it to be. Music shouldn't have to be all about God.
So we should play songs people enjoy singing at karaoke. We don't think people will come if we invite them to church with us. So we'll do some gimmick that will get them through the door, and then we can do a bait and switch.
Sometimes if you're like in youth group, it's, okay, our youth pastor is going to eat a goldfish, and so you should come. And then they come and they're like, yeah, I can't wait to see the goldfish eating.
And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, now there's a gospel message. And they're like, they didn't tell me this was coming. And I came for the goldfish, and this man has still yet to eat the goldfish.
God has given us his wisdom, and he is infinitely wise. He is not asking us to add to his registry list. So let us together as a church choose to follow godly wisdom, what he has asked us to do, and not seek merely human solutions.
When it comes to your life, and your, if you will, your battles with other people, whether that's a coworker, it might be your parents, it might be a friend. Choose to follow god's wisdom, not human solutions.
When you want to know how you should treat a person, look to the word of god and what it says. Don't just talk to your one friend that doesn't know the Lord, and is like, yeah, cut them off, slash their tires, burn down the house.
Don't listen to those people. Listen to the word of god. That's where wisdom is found.
That's where the blessing of god can be found. Today, Isaac, Jacob, Rebecca, Esau, they were all fighting for the blessing of god. And at the end of it, one was plotting murder.
One never got to see their favorite kid again. One guy had to leave, go a thousand miles from home, never saw his mom again. And the other one was so blind and couldn't tell his son's arm from a goat.
It's just a messed up family situation. For you and I, god's blessing is not found in human conflict. It's not found in our arguments.
It's not found in our duking it out with someone else. God's blessing is found in god's character. He is obedience.
He is honest. He forgives. He loves selflessly.
And he has given his wisdom. Today, which choice are you going to choose? The wisdom of god, his character, or human conflict?
