Family Feud - Take a Knee

When you s play sports in little league or even in college, at some point your coach is gonna say this to you.

Everybody take a knee.

And when he says everybody take a knee, a whole team gathers around because he thinks he's got something important to say.

A lot of times you're not paying attention, but he thinks it's important.

A lot of things important happen when you take a knee.

Think about taking a knee in prayer, doing the Tebow was popular last by him.

You even get on one knee to ask somebody to marry you.

And that's the title of this message today, Take a Knee.

Everybody say take a knee.

So we've been in this series for the last few weeks.

We've been following one of the most dysfunctional families in all of the scripture, this family of Jacob.

And if you're new with us, welcome.

I'm Pastor Forrest.

Nice to meet you.

Glad that you're here.

Hope that you feel at ease and welcome myself and about a hundred other people began the work of Multiply Church two years ago.

And glad that you're here.

And you jumped into this story of this family that's so dysfunctional in the Bible that we've been going over for weeks now.

And so you're kind of jumping in at the tail end, but I'm going to catch you up by saying this and give you a little comparison.

Anybody in the room ever watched The Lion King before?

Seen The Lion King?

Anyone?

That's an old new, but there's a new one of it and everything.

So this uh this story of this family is more in align with uh the Lion King top life.

Uh I I don't know about you, but um there are still children today being traumatized by the one scene that Mufasa It's a spoiler if you've not seen it.

It came out like 20 years ago.

So uh but still, still, that scars you uh uh from a deceitful, jealous uncle, a royal bloodline, and the attempt to steal the throne.

Has anybody ever stolen anything from you?

You ever had that feeling when you've got a wallet or a purse stolen from you?

Somebody's pulled the rug right out from beneath you.

Have you ever had a family member steal from you?

Have you ever had a family member break a promise to you that feeling?

Ooh, that feeling, man, it's difficult.

It's you immediately just feel violated.

Somebody has taken something from me that was mine, that was not theirs.

You know, uh I heard somebody say one time that if you have somebody in your life who doesn't believe in good and evil, doesn't believe in sin and all that, you just steal their wallet and see what they say.

Because that feeling that you get, you know.

You know you've been wronged.

And that is what Jacob has done to his brother Esau.

He's stolen from him.

He's taken from him a blessing.

And Jacob thinks that his brother Esau, that he stole from him now decades before in this story, that Jacob wants to kill him.

And Jacob is on the run from his brother Esau, and he thinks that his brother Esau, that that now, many years later, that Esau wants to take his life.

Esau wants to kill Jacob, and he's running from his life.

He runs into this deceitful, jealous uncle Laban who deceives him more.

He gets away from him, and then now he's been called by God after what we talked about last week.

After he had this transformational moment with God where he wrestled with God, God touched his hip, and he changed his name from Jacob the deceiver to Israel, the one who has seen God face to face, who's wrestled with God, and he has a transformation, and God is calling him now to go to the land of his relatives, of his ancestors, and to take onto him the promise and the blessing that now is his, but there's one thing standing in his way, and that is his brother Esau, who he believes wants to kill him, and he's found out that Esau's coming to meet him on the road, but not just by himself.

Esau's bringing 400 men with him.

And Jacob is scared.

He starts devising the plan because he doesn't know how Esau is going to receive him.

So he divides his family in two, and then he begins to create this plan of how he's going to greet Esau.

He sends hundreds of livestock before him as a peace offering, as a gift, trying to butter up his brother.

And then in chapter 33, we see what happens in this moment that they meet.

Starting in verse 1.

Then Jacob looked up and he saw Esau coming with his 400 men.

So he divided the children among Leah, Rachel, and his two servant wives.

He put the servant wives and their children at front, at the front, Leah and her children next, Rachel and Joseph last.

And then Jacob went ahead.

And as he approached his brother, he bowed to the ground seven times before him.

So Jacob devised a little scumbag scheme.

He's like, I'm gonna meet my brother.

And I got my family with me, so I'm gonna put my family that I like the least and love the least at the front.

And then next, and then next, and then next, and then he goes to the front, and as he's approaching his brother, he bows.

Seven times.

Not knowing whether or not he's going to be met with an execution.

And in humility.

Not knowing what's gonna happen.

Is there about to be a war?

Am I about to lose my life and my family's lives?

And then the total unexpected happened.

Verse 4.

Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, threw his arms around his neck and kissed him.

And they both wept.

Jacob introduces his family to Esau.

And Esau then asks about all these animals that he'd sent before him.

And Jacob tells him that he's given him this livestock as a portion of the blessing that he once stole, as a sign of friendship.

And then Esau declines and says, Not just I won't take your friendship, but he calls him my brother, my brother.

He says, I've I have more than enough.

Because see, at this point of the story, both brothers have been blessed, and Esau he meets Jacob with this friendly smile, and this is not at all what Jacob was expecting.

Jacob tries to give him this gift.

Please take this gift, this verse 11.

I've brought to you, for God has been very gracious to me, and I have more than enough.

Because Jacob insisted, Esau finally accepted the gift.

And then it gets a lot more complicated.

They've just had this beautiful moment.

These brothers that after all these decades and all that's happened between them, now it's water under the bridge.

They've hugged it out.

They've exchanged gifts.

Esau saying, Come with me.

Let's make this right.

And Jacob falls back into his deceiving ways.

And I'm sure he's trying to figure out what to say, and he's trying to figure out what to say quickly because he's just had this beautiful moment.

He doesn't want to wreck it.

And so he tells a lie.

And he he says, Ah, Esau, I can't come with you because in verse 13, you see, my lord, there's some of the children, they're very young, and the flocks and the herds, they're young too.

If they're driven too hard, even for one day, all the animals could die.

And he lies to Esau to his face, and he says, Esau, you go on ahead, and I'll follow behind you.

And then they left one another.

Esau left, and Jacob headed towards Canaan, which would eventually be the promised land where God called him to go.

See, in Jacob's case, sometimes it's easier to ignore our problems.

Just to act like nothing's wrong.

But we know that only makes things worse.

Jacob finds himself in this complicated situation.

What to do?

How to have restoration.

And I'm sure that he's the only one that has any complicated family dynamics, huh?

Nobody else?

Have any complicated family dynamics?

And we're going to learn some lessons from this.

And particularly how challenging it is for us to be upfront, to be clear with our family, for us to have restoration, to have healthy dynamics, to have boundaries.

These things are so difficult to achieve and to maintain.

But I'm encouraged by the fact that most families in the Bible are messed up in one way or another.

And the Lord still works through them.

See, sometimes we create conflict by being impulsive, like Esau was, and how he sold out his future.

Last Sunday, we had a great Sunday.

It was a beautiful day, had decisions.

It was a beautiful Sunday.

And then I was in just the craziest mood after church.

Went home, was being short with my kids, being super irritated, had a short fuse, and Emily was trying to tell me to calm down, to chill out, which is not what you want to hear when you're acting crazy.

And I followed her into the kitchen and I stuck my finger out of her like this.

Now nothing and any relationships like this for anybody.

And I said, You're being disrespectful.

And she looked at me.

I'm not saying that we've been married for almost 14 years.

I've never done this before.

You're being disrespectful.

And then I walked out of the kitchen.

And then within about 60 seconds, I realized I have missed this.

I have got to fix this mess.

And so I went back into the kitchen and I apologized.

And she was very gracious to me, and we hugged it out, and we had a beautiful moment there.

I didn't let that go too long.

I didn't let that fester.

I knew I messed up.

See, Jacob, he knew that he had wronged Esau.

And so he's coming before him humbly and trying to make things right.

We don't always get that chance, do we?

We don't always get that chance.

Maybe because somebody in our our family, they're no longer with us.

Maybe it's because somebody that you have some kind of situation and dynamic with, they just refuse to come to the table.

I know that in a room this size, there's some dynamics that have been in your family.

Maybe even with your parents, that have deeply wounded you.

And so, how in the world then do we start to restore a relationship back?

We're going to learn some lessons from what Jacob did in this situation and Esau.

So if we're pursuing to try to restore a relationship, the first thing that we need to do with that person, with the people, is number one, we need to honor them.

Now, assuming that this person is not a danger to you or your children, you can begin to start small to build a relationship back.

Happy birthdays, coffee, lunch.

But when we think about honoring, especially especially those that have hurt us, specifically if they're one of our parents.

Well, how are we supposed to do that if they have acted unhonorably, dishonorably?

Well, we can bare minimum honor the fact that they gave us life.

They gave us a life and that we're getting to walk out our future and our future families, and because they were the ones to give us life.

And we have Jacob here who is coming with honor before Esau, and he's bowing down seven times as a show of honor to try to make things right.

The second thing we can do is to respect them.

That means respecting them with our speech and our interaction.

That means not gossiping about them or talking bad about them behind their back.

Restore a relationship means that we, and we've talked about this for a few weeks, that we take the step to forgive them.

Or vice versa.

Esau forgives Jacob, receives him.

But I want to make a very clear distinction.

That just because you've forgiven them doesn't mean that you have to follow them.

Just because there's been forgiveness in the situation, just because you have taken the step to forgive someone just like you've been forgiven by God above, just because you've forgiven them and you've taken the step to say, I'm setting them free from the punishment I want to give them, doesn't mean then that you have to be with them all the time.

They have to come to Christmas, they have to be around you or your kids.

It just means you have to take the step to forgive them.

But in Esau's case, there was for the Esau and Jacob's case, there was forgiveness, but then Jacob did not follow him.

And the fourth thing that we do is we pray for them.

See, when we try to create healthy dynamics in our families, it's very difficult and it's hard to achieve.

And Jacob in this situation, and we don't know his motive, we don't know why.

He didn't just tell Esau straight up, Esau, thank you for the invitation.

I can't come your way because God's called me to go a different way.

We don't know.

But what we do know is that what Jacob attempted to do in the situation was to just keep the peace, to sweep it under the rug.

But we know that things don't stay under the rug, do they?

See, because Jesus is the one that told us that not blessed are the peacekeepers, but blessed are the peacemakers.

Not just the one that wants to sweep it under the rug, wants to ignore it, but instead is actively trying to, actively trying to make peace.

And sometimes the making of peace means that you have to put into place some boundaries in your relationship as you're stepping into trying to see them be restored.

And you're gonna have to accept some realities of the situation.

You're gonna have to accept the reality that this person that you're trying to have a restored relationship, that it may not all work out how you dreamed it would.

You're gonna have to accept the reality that that person may not have be and have a loving relationship with you.

You've got to accept the truth that boundaries and having healthy dynamics in your life and your family, that that is actually a loving response to your family and your needs and their needs.

You have to accept the risk.

The risk of losing affection, approval, or even being a part of that person's life.

You have to accept the decision.

Okay, these are the dynamics that we are going to have, that we're going to have for our family, for our kids, and we're gonna accept this decision, and then we're gonna be a united front with your spouse or whoever is involved, and then accept the consequences.

Decide to communicate the boundaries and let them play out.

I'll give you a perfect example.

A couple friends of Emily and Oz that are a little bit older than us.

A wife, her father has and had a decades-long battle with drug addiction.

And you can imagine over the decades they were stole from, broken promises, challenging circumstances, trying to see him get help in and out of rehabs, having an in-the-home, having out-of-the-home, trying to not enable his addiction.

And so as time went on and the decades went on, it came to the point where her father, he was living in his car.

And they made the decision and made the boundary that for their future, that they would do two things for him.

One, because he was living in his car, they would always put gas in his gas tank so that he could make it to meetings and so that he'd have a place to sleep.

And the second thing they chose is that we'll always give him food.

Other than those two things, those are the boundaries that we have and had in place for him and for their life.

See, Jacob, he tries to make peace.

He doesn't get it perfect, he doesn't do it perfectly.

But he chooses to follow God instead of following his family, instead of following Esau, and because of this, Jacob receives honor back from the Lord in this.

We saw this passage last week, Hebrews 11, 20 and 21.

It was by faith that Isaac promised blessing for his future sons, Jacob and Esau.

It was by faith that Jacob, when he was old and dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons and bowed in worship as he leaned on his staff.

See, Esau's family became a nation like Esau that didn't follow God.

And just like him, lost out on the birthright.

But God kept his covenant with Jacob.

So much so that God grafted himself into Jacob's story that God would add an honor to him and commitment to him and his covenant, not because he was perfect, because of God's perfection and covenant to him, because of God's grace to associate himself with Jacob, even to the point in the very next book, as God is introducing himself to Moses.

God says in Exodus 3, chapter chapter 3, verse 15, God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.

This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.

And then in the first chapter of the New Testament, that tells about the story and the lineage of the coming Messiah, Jesus.

In the first two verses, in the record of the Messiah to come, says this is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David of Abraham.

In verse two, Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob.

Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.

To the people that would remain in him, to the people that would accept him and be saved and would worship him.

Because here's the thing.

Because eventually what Philippians 2 10 tells us that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, and in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

That one day every single knee will bow, and every tongue will confess and will worship that Christ is Lord, that He is King, and that we now get to over and over and over again bow to God in worship.

And we get the choice to bow right now, over and over and over again, in humility, asking for God's forgiveness.

See Esau left and Jacob, he continued on to Canaan that would one day be the promised land for his future family and descendants.

And when he got there, when he got there, verse 18.

Later having traveled all the way to Padam Aram, Jacob arrived safely in the town of Shechem in the land of Canaan.

There he set up a camp outside the town.

And Jacob bought a plot of land where he camped for uh from the family of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of silver, and there he built an altar and named it uh El Elohisrael.

Means God, the God of Israel.

And for the first time, and for the first time in all of this story, for the first time in the last few weeks that we've been talking about Jacob and all the dynamics and all the ups and downs and all the roller coasters, for the first time, Jacob makes an altar to God and he bows down in worship to the one true king.

And God changes his heart.

And not too far from there, Jacob builds a well for his sons.

Now hear me out.

Everybody hear me out.

Hear me out.

He builds a well for his sons, and almost 1600 years later, a woman with five ex-husbands goes to that same well to draw water in the middle of the day.

Out of shape.

She meets Jesus and he asks her for a drink.

And he gives her the living.

And she runs into her town and she tells of the Messiah who knew everything about her.

And many in her town believed and were saved.

Even in the middle of her crazy dynamics, and even in the middle of her challenges, and even in the middle of her family dynamics and what she had going on, Jesus saved and restored her and used her.

At that very same place, that very same well that she met Jesus, where Jacob bit the knee to worship the God that restored him.

Imagine with me, imagine, imagine with me your future prayer.

That you ask for God to bless you and ask for God to forgive your sins, to allow you to be restored with Him and relationships in your life, and that you would step into eternity and that God would turn this mess into a miracle.

I was with three people two weeks ago here in our town that their situation was completely messed up.

Totally jacked up.

And I found myself with them, and we were talking through the circumstances, and I said, We're just gonna have to pray about this.

And in the middle of my message, I said, God, will you please turn this mess into a miracle?

And I wonder for you, the next time that things were messed up, when you made a jacked up decision, somebody's hurt you, that you would say, God, turn this mess into a miracle, please.

Would you say that with me after me?

God, turn this mess into a miracle.

God turn my mess into a miracle that I've made or that's happened to me, and I'm going to, at this point, I'm going to bend and take a knee and bow my heart before you in humility to ask for you to invade this circumstance and for you to do the miraculous.

Here's what I know.

In the last three years of the life of Multiplied Church, we have seen God do some amazing miracles in the families here.

I'm there.

I've seen the baptismal over the last three years.

For the dynamics to change because he is powerful enough for him to take a mess and turn it into the miraculous somebody say amen.

He's powerful enough and he's powerful enough today to do that for you.

Whole family to be restored.

He can do it.

But we gotta bow.

We gotta ask him to do it.

So I'm gonna do something I haven't done before, and that's uh I want to here in a second, I'm gonna bow down.

I'm gonna invite any of you who want to pray for your family or a friend of your family or somebody's family that you know that needs a miracle, that you would just come forward right now and bow a knee right here at the front.

Here in just a second, I'm gonna count to three and you come up, and then we're all gonna pray together.

Does that sound good?

Y'all ready for that?

Ready?

One, two, three.

Come before here, bend a knee.

I'll do it with you.

Bow your heads with me right now as we pray together.

Father, we pray all across this room right now, Father.

Ones that are coming, God, on behalf of their families or families that they know, God, that Lord, that you would do a powerful work, that God, you would transform lives, that God, you would replace a mess, God, with a miraculous work that can only happen through you.

God, we pray for families, God, that are separated, that are broken, that are difficult in difficult circumstances, that God, you would intervene.

God, we pray for those that are trapped in addiction and that are trapped in circumstances that feel like they have no hope.

But God, we know that you are hope, that you are our future, that you are our shield, that you are our stay.

And so, Father, right now, God, as we bow before you, Father, that Lord, you would work powerfully.

That you would transform, that God, you would do what only you can do.

Everybody's head bowed, eyes closed, you're in the room today, and you need to take the step to receive Jesus, to be forgiven, to be saved, to trust in his finished work on the cross.

And today is your day for you to do it.

I'm gonna ask for you to, in just a moment, for you to take a step to raise your hand up so I can pray for you specifically, for you to give your life to Christ, for him to forgive you, for him to restore you, for you to walk from this day into eternity because of your decision to follow him.

If that's you today, I'm gonna ask you the count of three, ready.

One, two, three, raise your hand.

Anybody in the room?

Anybody here to accept Jesus as their Savior?

Father, we pray right now, across the room, Lord, that you would work your miracle working power, God, to transform our families, to transform, God, our lives.

People that we know, and God, we know, and Lord, that it doesn't matter how messed up we are, that we can come to your throne and we can be forgiven, restored, and changed by the mighty, mighty power of your blood.

And we thank you for it, and we praise you in the strong name of Jesus.

Everybody said, Amen.

Church, will you stand to your feet as we sing and worship?