Family Feud - Battle for Your Blessing

Well, before I get started, I want to share a good rumor that I heard about you this week.

I met a prominent person in our community, a local principal, and we were having a conversation.

She asked how we made it at Frankfurt.

I told her that I was a pastor.

She said of where and said multiply church, and she said, Multiply.

Your church is everywhere.

Yes, yeah.

Well, she said that.

Um uh she's involved in different nonprofits, and I was just thinking about us being two years old, and that's a good rumor uh that's being spread, and that's because of you all, and because of what you've done to be outside the walls of this place, loving and caring and serving this town for God's glory.

And we're not gonna stop, are we, church?

We're not slowing down, are we, church?

No, we're gonna keep going and we're gonna keep connecting, we're gonna keep serving with Frankfurt Ford Initiative and the things that we're doing outside the walls.

And uh anyway, just had to share that with you.

Um, and if you're new with us this morning, welcome.

I'm Forrest Lee Pastor here at Multiply myself and about a hundred other people.

Started the work of Multiply Church just a couple years ago.

Glad that you are here if you're new with us, and we're in this series, and we're in the second to last week of this series called Family Feud, where we have been following one of the most dysfunctional families in the whole Bible and learning lessons from their lives.

And uh, today's message is titled Battle for Your Blessing.

Um, you guys know I love football, I played football, have had the opportunity of as a player being in the locker room at halftime and with other teams at halftime.

And here's what happens at halftime in a football game.

It may be different, uh, maybe you've not experienced that before, but uh while the fans are out in the crowd having a great time watching the awesome band or whatever the program is that's happening at halftime, it's a totally different experience in the locker room.

All the players are in there, they're tired, they're drinking some Gatorade, drinking some water, they're waiting for their coach to come in different position coaches, offense, defense, and to get them together and to huddle them up to make adjustments, to uh give some new battle plans at halftime.

See why everybody's having a great time.

They're there uh in the back in the field house and the coach is making adjustments.

And the adjustments that are being made are normally uh adjustments to plays or to personnel of ways that they need to change into halftime.

Now, here's where you need to get nervous.

If the coach comes to you and he says, y'all just need to keep doing what you're doing, but you're losing, okay?

If that's what's happening in halftime, you need to get scared because you're about to lose.

Because your coach has no idea, any tips to give you in order for you to make a comeback.

Here's the thing, here's the thing.

We fight back after halftime.

There's no great comebacks in the first half.

It's always after the battle has begun.

Here's the thing: there's hope at halftime.

There's hope at halftime.

And as we enter into the story of this family that centers around Jacob in the scripture and his family, the part of the story that we're about to read is Jacob's halftime.

See, Jacob, who is known as the deceiver, literally his name means deceiver, it means liar, heel holder, trickster.

See, what Jacob was supposed to be doing for his life is was carrying this blessing that was passed down and supposed to be passed down to him, all the way back from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Isaac, his father, and then passed to Jacob this blessing.

This blessing that goes all the way back to the very beginning in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

God creates the universe, he creates the world, he creates people, and in Genesis chapter 1, he, the Lord gives this blessing that's this Hebrew word barek, and it means to bless.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

This blessing that he speaks over Adam to be fruitful and to multiply.

And then he gives a bonus blessing on top of it, that the the fruitfulness and the multiply that happens, that then that they will rule over it.

And this is the blessing that Jacob is supposed to be walking in.

It's supposed to be carrying, it's supposed to be receiving, but he's not believing it.

And because he's not believing it, he's not receiving it.

See, this is Jacob's halftime comeback because up until now, he's had a string of very bad plays.

He stole his brother's inheritance by stealing by deceiving his father Isaac.

Then Jacob goes and he meets his match with his uncle Laban, who deceives him for 20 years.

And Kawei gave a great message about that last Sunday.

And after this 20-year battle of deceiving one another, Jacob goes on the run and he's being pursued by his uncle Laban, and they make a pact, they make a covenant, they make an agreement that they're never going to speak or be close to one another again.

And all the while, all the while, Jacob's brother, who he stole his inheritance, his blessing, his birthright from, Esau wants to kill him.

And Jacob, knowing after this 20 years of being away, God's calling him to go back to his land where his relatives are, that he's supposed to be walking in this blessing, but he's afraid.

And he prays in Genesis chapter 32, and this prayer that he's praying for his life, it shows us what circumstances that he is in, and how that we should ought to pray to the Lord in humility, remembering the promises of God and asking God to make good on his promises.

Genesis 32 · chapter mention

This is what Jacob prayed to the Lord.

This is verse 9.

Then Jacob prayed, O God of my grandfather Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, you told me, return to your own land and to your relatives.

You promise me, I will treat you kindly.

I'm not worthy of all the unfailing love and faithfulness you have shown me, your servant.

When I left home and crossed the Jordan River, I owed, I owned nothing except a walking stick.

Now my household fills two large camps.

Oh Lord, please rescue me from the hand of my brother Esau.

I'm afraid that he's coming to attack me along with my wives and children.

But you promise me, I will surely treat you kindly, and I will multiply your descendants until they become as numerous as the sands along the seashores, too many to count.

Jacob goes before God, and he's begging for a blessing.

He's begging for God to make good on this blessing in his life and blessing that is over his life, this blessing that he should be fruitful and multiplying, and that he should have a life that's multiplying life, but he's afraid.

He's afraid because he's thinking what goes around comes around.

He's thinking about how he deceived his brother.

He's thinking about the life that he has lived, lived, filled with lives and lies, and he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And he's afraid.

All the things that he's done in his life, he knows that something's coming, and he's he's so afraid of what's coming around the bend.

And he prays God's promises to him and says, God, you promised me that you were gonna treat me kindly.

You promised me this blessing.

In the same way, you and I, we need to pray God's promises back to him.

See, that's why we need to know God's word.

Because if you don't know what the promises are that God has for your life, you don't know what to pray.

You don't know what to ask God to make good on.

You don't know what he has given you and wants to give you as an inheritance if you don't know God's word.

So download the Bible app, go to plans, choose one, and start reading so you can learn the promises of God.

See, Jacob continues to devise and scheme and plan, and he makes his own plan that he's going to appease, butter up his brother, and send a bunch of gifts ahead of him going into the land of his relatives to his brother to try to appease him.

Because at this point, he's learned, and the news has come that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men.

And Jacob's worried.

And this crazy sibling rivalry lives on that started at day one.

See, Esau and Jacob, his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, they couldn't get pregnant.

And so they prayed to the Lord back a few chapters earlier in chapter 25, that God would help them to have children.

And this is what Isaac prayed in chapter 25, verse 21.

Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was unable to have children.

The Lord answered Isaac's prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant with twins.

That's multiplication right there.

But the two children struggle with each other in her womb.

She went to ask the Lord about it.

Why is this happening to me?

She asked.

And the Lord told her, The sons in your womb will become two nations.

From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals.

One nation will be stronger than the other, and your older son will serve your younger son.

Here's an important note.

Here's an important note right here in this passage.

God had already planned to bless Jacob.

He had already set it up to bless Jacob.

But Jacob had been trying to get the blessing on his own terms the entire time.

We do the same thing in our lives, don't we?

We try to do it our way.

We think that we can get what we want.

Just doing it ourselves.

This is big for God.

This is big for men.

Because we think we're so smart.

We think that we're so smart that we're a self-made person, but who gave you your brain, sir?

You think that you built your life and your family with your bare hands, but who gave you your hands?

You think you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps?

Maybe you did, but who gave you your feet?

See, what happens is that we try to do life my way, and instead of God's way, we lose our way.

See you have been ignoring God, some of us, for so long.

Struggling, fighting with everyone and everything else but God in order to succeed.

You busted your tail in school.

At your job, to have a family, to wrangle a husband or wife on your own terms.

And God wanted to bless you the whole time.

See, Jacob was expecting a struggle with Esau.

But what he got was a struggle with God.

See, he's expecting these 400 men and Esau to come and to attack him.

But God intervenes and he picks a fight with Jacob.

While Jacob's fighting for his life, Jacob makes a decision to go ahead and send his family on in front of him across the river, and that leaves him alone in the camp.

And this is what happened there at the camp.

This is back to chapter 32, verse 24.

This left Jacob all alone in the camp.

And a man came and wrestled with him until dawn began to break.

When the man said that when the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob's hip and wrenched it out of socket.

Then the man said, Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.

But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me.

What is your name?

The man asked.

He replied, Jacob.

Your name will no longer be Jacob, the man told him.

From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won.

Please tell me your name.

Jacob said, Why do you want to know my name?

The man replied.

Then he blessed Jacob there.

Jacob named the place Peniel, which means face of God, for he said, I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.

And the sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel, and he was limping because of the injury to his hip.

See, Jacob is expecting this human fight.

Maybe he's thinking that one of these 400 men who are coming with Esau, maybe it was a spy that came early, an assassin came early to come and to get him.

But at some point during the night, he realizes that he's not wrestling and fighting with a mere man, but he is fighting a greater force.

And once he figures it out, he says, I'm not letting go until you bless me.

No pain, no gain.

Listen to me, listen to me, listen to me.

Don't give up before you get your gift.

Don't stop in the middle.

I was talking to my sister-in-law, she's a surgeon.

And we were telling some stories and talking some stories, and she was telling me about a story of that she heard when she was in residency.

This wasn't her case, but it was somebody else's case of a woman who went in to surgery for a spine surgery.

And in the middle of the surgery, she woke up.

The surgeon didn't know she was awake, but she was awake and could hear everything that was being said and feel all the pain and the surgery on her back.

This doesn't happen very often.

Listen, if God's doing surgery on you, don't get up off the table.

The worst thing that she could have done was get up off the table in the middle of it.

In the same way.

This story is a picture with Jacob of the rest of the Bible.

The Israelites.

In Exodus, wanting to do it their way, become enslaved.

And God finally hears their prayers and they're delivered out of slavery in Egypt.

And then they complain the entire time that they want to go back into their slavery.

They complain to God in the book of Kings and they are asking after judges that God would give them an earthly king, even though that wasn't God's plan.

And so He let them have earthly kings, and then they had a string and string and of evil kings.

Even the gospels.

Jesus came.

Jesus came, and all so many people rejected who he was.

Trying to prove him wrong.

In the early church.

As the church spread throughout the known world.

They fought against these different places and other gods and other idols and other ways creeping in.

See, here's the thing.

Oftentimes when God wants to bless people, they brush it off.

And sometimes you have to be wounded in order to win.

Jesus, the suffering servant, who was crushed for our iniquities, who was pierced for our transgressions.

Is what Isaiah 53 says.

That Jesus, though he knew no sin, became sin.

That we might get to walk in everlasting life.

Jesus went to the cross and he suffered on the cross and he was wounded so that we might be able to walk in the victory of new life in him.

And oftentimes we have to be broken before blessed.

That's sometimes even suffering and doing good things.

Don't miss this, don't miss this.

The early church, they learned this.

Paul is on his missionary journey in 2 Corinthians.

And don't miss this scripture here, because I've been thinking about it so much.

In verse 8 of Corinthians, he said, We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, I'm just gonna let you know this, about the trouble we went through in the Providence of Asia.

We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure.

And we thought that we would never live through it.

In fact, we expected to die.

But as a result, everybody said, as a result, as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God who raises the dead.

Who today can tell me and can agree with me that we can rely on the resurrector?

We can rely on the one who helps people step them out of the grave into new life.

We can rely on the one that he himself, though he was broken and he suffered, stepped out victorious three days later in an empty grave so that we can have life with him.

We can rely on the resurrector, we can rely on Christ because he has gone before us and he has done the work before us.

And sometimes we just have to realize that we need to rely on him and not ourselves.

Stop relying on yourself.

Here's a teaser for next week.

We're gonna see how this all works out.

We're gonna see how this all works out between Jacob and Esau.

But I want to I wanna fast forward a little bit.

I want to fast forward to the way that Jacob is remembered and how he's remembered in blessing his grandsons in the New Testament, in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

See, Hebrews chapter 11 is it's known as this hall of faith.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

It's all it's it's basically this list of all these prominent stories and people who had believed and had faith and stepped in faith and had their faith, had feet, and there's this list going through and talking through basically from beginning to end of the Bible, all these different people that God used for his glory.

And this is how Jacob is remembered in that hall of faith.

This is verse 21.

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, Jacob, he continued to lean on God.

That hip, it was never quite right.

He walked with a limp.

So much so that in Hebrews, he's remembered by the fact that he leaned on his staff.

Who in the room knows that your scars, they tell stories?

That God doesn't want to just leave you in one place.

In 1992, the Olympics were in Barcelona.

And Derek Redmond, who was a decorated record holding.

Metal winning runner was preparing for these Olympic Games.

And as he was preparing for the games, uh sustain the injury to his injury, and he was nursing this in injury, and as he got to the games and was getting set for his 400-meter race, all of them were on the blocks, and the gun went off from the run in 15 seconds into the 45-second race.

Medical and different employees came running to the track, and no sooner that they got to him on the track did he pop up and begin to hobble, begin to limp.

Now he was an Olympian, so it was pretty quick, but he was limping, he was hobbling towards the finish line.

And at the same time, an older man came down through the crowd, down the steps, and jumped on to the track and was fighting through security to get up to Derek and grabbed a hold of him and threw his arm over his shoulder and they began to walk forward.

That man was his father.

And when his father got to Derek, he said, son, you have nothing to prove.

And he said, Dad, I want to finish.

And he said, Well, we're gonna finish together.

And he and his father, like Derek limped, for quite a while.

And 65,000 fans roared an applause, limped across the finish line together.

Who in the room knows that God wants to do the same thing for us?

That we would let our limb lead to leaning on the Lord.

Leaning on the Lord with your limb.

Leaning towards God as you head towards the finish line.

Just imagine with me for a second.

Imagine with me for a moment.

Imagine if you stop leaning on that sinful relationship, on your money, on your status, on your job, on your social media likes, on your addiction, that drug, on your deception, on your self-righteous spirit, on your five-year plan, on your control.

What are you leaning on?

Well, we can know what we're leaning on a lot of times is because of what we run to first.

When things get tough, do you run to your friends?

Do you run to social media?

Do you run to an addiction?

Do you run to your workplace?

Do you run to something other than God that you're leaning on?

But instead, instead, we can battle for the blessing.

By holding on to God and not letting go.

It is never too late to start over.

Amen.

Maybe today, maybe today is somebody's halftime.

Maybe today is the day for you who came in today and you've given up on church because of something that has happened, something happened to you, something that went on in the past, and you're limping.

And today is your halftime for you to begin to lean on God.

Maybe you're in the room today and you've been questioning whether God is real or not.

Because somewhere along the way, somebody misrepresented Jesus in your life.

Can I make a deal with you?

We won't judge you based on the person who knows you with the worst character.

So don't do that to Jesus either.

Maybe today is somebody's halftime for somebody to finally say, I need help.

Maybe there's relationships in your family that are broken.

It's not too late to start over.

Maybe you're a single mom and you feel like that.

You've been forgotten.

God doesn't see you.

Maybe it's a job situation, you're in transition, you don't know what you're gonna do.

You feel like you're limping along.

God just wants you to throw your arm over his shoulder and lean on.

You're in mountains of debt.

You don't know what you're gonna do, how you're gonna get out.

But it's time for you to lean in.

And it may be time for you to lean into this church.

For you to finally say, you know what?

Yep, yep, I'm gonna get involved.

I need to lean in.

I've been leaning on all these other things, but I know I need to take the step to be in relationship with others in a small group, serving with people on a team, begin to lean in and leaning on God.

And my prayer and hope is that everyone in this room would be leaning on God with whatever limp it is that you currently have, whether it's something that was done to you or something that you did yourself, or maybe that you were going down a path so far away from God, he needed to get your attention for you to begin to lean on him, wrestle with him, walk with him.

My prayer is that you're gonna be leaning on the Lord.

Who in here is gonna do that?

If you're gonna lean on God today, say I'm leaning on God.

If you want to lean on God today and not on yourself, say I'm leaning on God.

We're leaning in because as we lean on the Lord, and God gave Jacob a new name, where he was known as a deceiver, as a liar, as a schemer, as a cheat.

As he wrestled with God, God said, Your name is no longer that, your name is now Israel, that you've wrestled with God, that you struggle with God, and that namesake ended up being the nation of Israel.

That one day Jesus, the Christ, would come from.

For you to battle for your blessing, and for you to be changed, and for you to put your life and heart into God and lean on Him and on Christ and what He did on the cross for you 2,000 years ago, so that you could battle for your blessing, that you could be changed a new name, you can have a new future, and a new life, and a new forgiveness, and a new blessing, and a new start.

And maybe you've given your life to Jesus in the past, but right now you're leaning on a lot of other stuff.

And it's time for you to let those things go.

And as you lift to the finish line, lean on Him.

Actually, will you stand your feet with your head bowed?

Father, all across this room, will we stand in your presence?

And like Jacob, we claim the promise that you have for us.

That you have given us a sacrifice in our place, that you took our sin on your back and you died for us, so that we could walk in a blessed life, in a multiplied life, in the abundant life that you have given to us, we have access to, and so, Father, today, God, we speak and we say, God, that we are leaning on you for the blessing.

Father, help us, Lord, to not run to any other thing.

Father, I pray all across this room that if anybody in this room that is here today and has not given you their life, their heart, has not received the forgiveness that you bought for them on the cross or the price, that today will be the day that they do it.

Today will be the day that they ask for you to forgive them, to cleanse them, so that they can be in heaven with you.

And so, if that's you today, I ask you right now, in a genuine place in your heart and mind, to ask God in prayer and communicate to Him and say, Jesus, save me.

Just pray it in your mind and heart, Jesus, save me.

I believe that you're the Son of God, that you died on the cross for my sin, and I receive it.

Forgive me, cleanse me, change me from this day forward so I can walk with you.

Thank you for loving me.

Thank you for dying for me.

Thank you for blessing me.

In Jesus' name.

Head bowed this morning.

You prayed that just now of a genuine place in your heart and mind to receive the free gift of salvation that Christ purchased for you on the cross.

And today was your day.

I'm gonna ask you in a moment of faith for your feet, your faith to have feet.

For you in an act of submission to God and a proclamation, in just a moment for you to raise your hand up.

At the count of three, I'm gonna count to three.

And today is your day for you to lean in, give your life over to Jesus.

At the count of three, in just a moment, I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand up so I can see you, lock eyes with you, if that's you today.

At the count of one, two, three.

Anybody right here?

Right here in the back?

Anybody else?

God, for those right now who put their hand towards heaven, towards you, God, to be forgiven, to receive your free gift of salvation.

God, we thank you, Lord.

We thank you that from today forward, they're saying, God, they're giving their life, giving their heart to you, to be forgiven and free.

And God, we pray right now, Father, and claim God over their life the blessing and the inheritance that comes with it from this day and into eternity.

So, God, we love you, we thank you, we praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Church, will you celebrate together right now as we head in to sing?