Family Feud - The Secret to Success

Well, how's it going?

Multiply fam, how you guys doing?

Come on, it's Memorial Day, you know.

Before we get started though, I do uh if you could slip up your hand really quick.

If you have a family member or you have a friend, somebody that you know uh that has paid the ultimate price and because of their service, they have died.

Can you just slip up your hand really quick, really quick, really quick?

Um can we put our hands together and honor and take a minute and recognize these men and women that have paid the ultimate price?

I don't know about you, but man, I am so, so, so grateful for the men and women that have sacrificed for our freedom.

Jesus said it best.

He said that no greater love has this than to lay your life down for your friends.

So how many of y'all are thankful for the men and women that have paid the ultimate price for our freedom?

We're grateful for that.

And so we go into Memorial Day weekend uh with them in mind.

We're grateful, we're grateful.

And uh, I'm grateful for you, uh, my multiply fam.

You're like, who are you?

That's a great question.

Uh you don't know me, but I know you.

Uh Pastor Forrest talks about you all the time, him and his wife Emily, and uh they love you so much.

They brag on you all the time.

I have to tell him to like stop talking about you, but he just he's obsessed with you uh in a good way.

You know what I mean?

Not in a weird way, not like it's a little clingy, it's not like that, okay?

It's it's a it's a healthy way.

Uh no, he he has become like a brother uh to me uh very quickly.

My wife and I, we our family moved here to Lexington about uh seven, eight weeks ago now.

Uh and uh uh he very quickly, uh oh, we started talking a couple months even before I moved here.

Um, but that was just a divine thing.

Even how we were introduced, it was like the Lord knew I needed forest and that we would be brothers together, doing ministry together here in the Lexington, you know, metro area.

No, you guys aren't in Lexington, but uh but but I think God knew that I needed a forest.

And so I'm grateful for your pastor.

Uh I'm grateful for his wife Emily and just the the friends that they've been.

They've been so encouraging, so kind, so generous.

Uh, and so you're in good hands.

If this is your first time here, this is a great church to plant yourself and to root yourself.

Amen.

How many are grateful for multiply?

Well, we are in a uh series.

Uh I'm trying, I'm going back and forth on when I should say more about uh this always helps, okay?

You're like, this isn't necessary, it is necessary uh because you don't know me.

So this helps disarm that.

You know what I'm saying?

Like where you're like, who is this guy?

You'll spend the first 10 minutes figuring out who I am.

Uh my beautiful wife Jess is here.

We've been married for almost 14 years.

Uh we've been, yeah, there you go.

Give it up for Jess.

Uh we've been together for almost 16, and uh, we have two beautiful babies, Willow and Roman.

They are in the kids' uh church right now, and uh love and life, and so uh grateful to be here with you.

Uh we are in our series Family Feud.

And if you did not catch the message last week, uh, you know, praise the Lord for the website and online and where you can go back and you can watch all these messages.

And so uh Pastor Forrest talked about uh what we're defining as one of the most dysfunctional families in Scripture.

Um, how many of y'all have a dysfunctional family?

Wow, I can't believe you raised your hand.

I was surely I was thinking hopefully you're not with your family.

So no, but it's true.

I mean, we all have these dysfunctional parts uh in our family.

There is no such thing as a perfect family.

And so I love that we're taking a look at a one of the many dysfunctional families that you'll find throughout scripture.

One of the things I love about the Bible is the dysfunction that comes with it.

Uh, if I were to write the Bible, I probably would take that part out.

But what I love about Scripture is that it gives you a picture of the actual place of the human condition, the current condition of the human heart and what we struggle with, and then ultimately pointing us to where we're going.

So I love that the, if I could put it this way, the humanity of scripture.

And so uh, so we're gonna look at this dysfunctional family.

We talked about last week, Jacob and Esau, and how Esau sold his inheritance, sold his future for a bowl of bean soup.

You're like, I would never do that.

You should go back and listen to that message last week, because we do it all the time.

We do it all the time.

And so we're gonna continue Jacob's story, and we're gonna talk about uh one of my favorite parts of Jacob's story, uh, and we're gonna talk about Rachel and Leah.

Uh, one of the things that I'll say before we open up our Bibles to Genesis chapter 29 is uh we have this lie, this uh thing that we buy into.

Genesis 29 · chapter mention

We're all enticed by it, we're lured in by the myth of the perfect life or the perfect family or the perfect kids or the perfect marriage or the perfect job, the perfect career, the perfect house, the perfect everything.

And it just has this way of luring us in.

And then when we don't have that, we get frustrated and we get upset and we get bitter and then we resent the neighbor that we look at and we're like, man, their life seems so great.

Why is my life not like that?

Can anybody relate?

I like it, just three people, but hey, it's all right.

It's all right, okay.

Let's open up our Bibles to Genesis chapter 29.

Genesis 29 · chapter mention

Uh, I love this story of Jacob and Leah.

Uh, the scripture says Genesis 29, we're gonna start in verse 16.

Uh Laban, now Laban had two daughters.

Everybody say two daughters.

The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.

Everybody say Leah?

Everybody say Rachel.

Verse 17, Leah's eyes were weak.

Okay?

That's the Bible's way of saying she ain't cute.

Okay?

She's just not cute.

All right, she's not, all right?

It's okay.

Turn to your neighbor and say it's okay.

It's okay.

But Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance.

Notice that we're looking at these two women from the outside.

We're judging their appearance, okay?

We're going somewhere with this.

Verse 18, Jacob loved Rachel.

Of course he did.

And he said, I will serve, talking to his father-in-law, I'll serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel, because she's cute.

Laban said, Well, it's better I give her to you than I should give her to any other man.

What a father-in-law thing to say.

It's like, thanks, Dad.

Verse 20, so Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love that he had for everybody.

Say, Oh, man, that's so sweet.

And so then the scripture goes on to say that uh Jacob serves, of course, the seven years, and then here he is, they have this big feast, and then here's their wedding day, and then Jacob goes to bed.

What a great night.

He wakes up the next morning in verse 25.

In the morning, behold, it was Leah and Jacob.

Come on, how many of y'all love the Bible?

And Jacob said to Laban, What is this that you have done to me?

Did I not serve with you for who?

Why then have you deceived me?

Last week we talked about Jacob the deceiver, and now the deceiver has been deceived by Laban.

What do you do when life gives you a Leah?

What do you do when life gives you a Leah?

Now, I'm gonna run with this thought for the rest of our 14 minutes.

Uh it's a little bit more than 14 minutes, but 14 minutes sounds good, okay?

Uh what do you do when life gives you a Leah?

Now, what what I want to make sure that you know is when I'm talking about Leah, all right, uh, what I'm not saying is what do you do when life gives you an unattractive spouse?

Okay?

That's not what we're talking about here, all right?

What do you do when life gives you an unattractive spouse and you look at somebody else that's cuter?

That's not what we're talking about here, okay?

We're talking about something deeper here.

We're talking about what do you do when life isn't what you thought it would be?

What do you do when life isn't what you feel like it should be?

What do you do when you go to bed with a dream and you wake up with disappointment?

What do you do when you look at your life and it it just doesn't seem as attractive as some other people's lives?

You look at their lives, and man, their life looks so attractive.

Like it just looked that they've got it all figured out.

They've got the dream job, the dream spouse, the dream kids.

Like their kids are just so perfect.

What is it?

What happened that that here it feels like you've been dealt maybe a Leah?

Rachel represents the dream.

Rachel represents the perfect family, the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect kids.

But Leah represents the opposite.

Leah isn't what you would say is the dream.

Leah isn't perfect.

Leah was overlooked, Leah was the underdog.

Leah is the less desirable thing.

All of us have Leahs.

We have these Leah in life.

They are the spaces and places in our life that we would say are maybe unfair.

They're the places in our life that you would say are maybe not as attractive on the outside.

Rachel is what we're attracted to, but Leah is a lot of times what we wake up to, and it seems unfair.

Can anybody relate?

Perhaps you have a dream, you know, for your family, a dream for your marriage, a dream for the business that you want to start, a dream that you have in your heart, this life that you see, and you feel like you kind of woke up to Leah.

What do you do?

What do you do with the undesirable parts of your life?

What do you do with the unattractive and unfair parts of your life?

We're gonna answer that question today.

Are y'all ready?

We're gonna are y'all ready?

Okay.

This gets better the more vocal you are, just letting you know, okay?

So if you're not vocal and it's bad, that's your fault.

Okay, it's not I'm just letting you know.

I'm just letting you know ahead of time, okay?

There are four kids, children, that Leah has that we're gonna learn, uh we're gonna learn lessons from Leah of these four kids.

This is very intentional.

Uh the scripture says that the first son that Leah has is Reuben.

Everybody say Reuben, which means behold a son, behold a son.

This is an answered prayer for Leah.

So what do we learn?

What's Leah lesson number one is that God sees you.

God sees you.

Genesis chapter 29, verse 31, the scripture says that the Lord saw that Leah was hated, overlooked, and what did he do?

Genesis 29:31

He opened up her womb.

God sees you, God sees you, God sees you.

This is important because when you're going through a Leah season, when you look at the less desirable areas and places and spaces in your life, it's it's really, really easy to conclude that God doesn't see you, right?

But when you go through those Rachel seasons or those Rachel moments, or you look at somebody and you're like, man, they're just they're living it up.

They've got it all together, we immediately conclude God sees them, but that God doesn't see us in our Leah.

We have a tendency to look at the Rachels and think that God is answering their prayer, but that He's not answering our prayer because we've been dealt a Leah.

Can anybody relate?

So lesson, we're going somewhere with this, okay?

Just buckle up.

So, number one, the the Leah lesson number one that we need to know is that God sees you.

He sees you, He sees you, He sees you.

And whatever your Leah is, you know, my prayer was that you'd you'd get that Leah in your mind.

Whatever that Leah is, whatever this thing is that maybe has been a thorn in your flesh, get that Leah in your mind.

And you need to know that in that context, God sees you.

He sees you.

Okay.

The second child that Leah gives birth to is Simeon.

Everybody says Simeon, which means he who listens.

So the second lesson that we learn from Leah is number two that God hears you.

Okay.

This is also important.

God hears you.

He sees you and he hears you.

Now, it may not feel like God hears you.

In fact, it may feel like he's being inattentive.

It may feel like he's being uh uncooperative.

While everyone else on Instagram is living up their Rachel season, living the dream.

Here you are, living in your Leah season.

And it can feel like God is listening to their prayers, but he isn't listening to your prayers.

It seems like he cares about them, he sees them, he's hearing them, but it doesn't feel like that way with you.

The lesson that we learn from Leah is that God sees you and that God hears you.

The attractiveness in life has nothing to do with God hearing you or seeing you.

But why we connect those two, I don't know.

I do it all the time too, by the way.

If you, if your life looks like Leah or if your life looks like Rachel, it makes no difference.

God hears you and God sees you, because God actually heard even Rachel's cry, because Rachel at this point hasn't had any children.

And so God ends up listening in and hearing Rachel too.

So regardless if your season is a Rachel season or a Leah season, God hears you and God sees you.

I'm gonna keep saying it until you believe it.

Amen.

Uh within two weeks of Jess and I moving to Lexington, uh uh I was, it was like a Saturday, I think.

I was working out and in my garage, and I have this like pull-up bar that's like right behind me, and I'm on my rower, and Roman, my my six-year-old, almost seven, is is playing on the pull-up bar, and I'm rowing, and then all of a sudden I hear this loud thud.

I'm like, that didn't sound good.

So I so I turn around and I look, and he's just like kind of laying on the ground, and he looks up at me, and there's just like kind of silent.

I stopped rowing.

I'm like, and then he's like, I think I broke my arm.

I'm like, oh God.

Uh then the tears come.

So I'm like, this is this is not good.

Because the thud sounded not good.

And then the fact that he like kind of like looked at me, like what was going on, I could tell something didn't go right.

Uh and so we're like, well, well, maybe he just heard it really bad.

So we gave it 24 hours, let it kind of breathe.

We've been here for two weeks.

We don't even know where to go.

Where's the hospital?

Where's urgent care?

Where do you go?

We don't have a doctor, we got nothing.

We just figured out where Kroger was, okay?

Uh and so we're we're we're we're wrestling with this.

We're like, well, let's give it 24 hours, we'll see, and then we're asking people like that we do know, like the one person that we know, Forrest and Emily.

Uh no, we're just figuring out where to go if we have to go, so we give it 24 hours, and you can tell Roman's his wrist is not doing good.

You can feel it.

And uh you can we went to the park and he's kind of nursing it.

You're like, oh God, we're gonna have to go to urgent care.

So now it's Sunday, and we go to urgent care.

Hey, welcome to Lexington.

And so we go to urgent care and they confirm through an x-ray he broke his his wrist.

Um, so we're like, great, we're so excited about that.

And so they put a temporary cast on him, then they recommend us to some ortho to go Monday to get a permanent cast.

So here we are there, permanent cast about four days later, my cheek starts to hurt like crazy, like just this excruciating pain in my cheek.

Uh, and you're like, that's so random.

I know, okay.

I I could only like open my mouth like in half an inch.

And so I'm like to eat, I'm like shoving food through my half-inch open mouth and then just swallowing it whole because I'm like dying of pain, and my cheek just gets getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So I go to urgent care.

Uh, where else to go?

So here I am, you know, back again at urgent care.

Uh, and they tell me they have no idea what's wrong.

So they just give me an antibiotic.

I'm like, okay, well, maybe that will clear it up.

Take that for a couple days, it does nothing.

Uh, so then I text my doctor friend back in Cincinnati, and I'm like, hey, um, I'm dying.

What should I do?

And uh, and he says, You you really need to go to the ER.

Uh, that doesn't sound good.

I'm like, here we go, three weeks in, and we've already been to urgent care.

We've already gotten a cast.

Now I'm gonna go spend the entire day in the ER.

And so here I am in the emergency room.

They hook me up to the IVs, and then they have to do a CT scan.

Uh, they want to know what it is, so that there's pumping iodine, which have you ever had iodine pump through?

Not cool.

Not cool.

It's not cool.

They're like, hey, we're just gonna warn you, it might feel like you're you're gonna pee your pants.

I'm like, okay, that's kind of a weird feeling.

But I like sit back, I'm like, oh, I don't like this.

This, this is when you felt it kick in, you're like, this is not good.

I don't like this.

Uh so you go through this whole process, I'm there all day, then they conclude you have a really bad infection in your cheek.

You're like, why is your mouth so dirty?

Don't judge me, okay?

So so I so I so they give me this crazy high antibiotic, okay?

I'm taking three pills three times a day.

Um, and so I'm on my way home to go get my antibiotic, okay?

And then Jess calls me.

You know, the story just gets better and better and better.

She calls me.

This is no joke, okay?

This is the same day I'm dying in pain because I'm on the clock with ibuprofen and taunol, and I've been in the ER for the whole day, and I'm not taking any ibuprofen or tahanol.

So, like, my I'm just throbbing in pain.

Jess calls me and she's crying.

And then I hear the kids screaming in the background, and then all I hear Jess say is that Roman's gonna lose his finger.

I'm like, what?

What what do you mean he's gonna lose his finger?

Like, what happened?

So I get home and then Willow's like running out of the garage screaming.

Jess is carrying Roman.

He didn't lose his finger, praise the Lord, it's all good.

Willow slammed his finger in the door on accident, she felt terrible.

But but but but but my point in saying all that is here, I've been here for three weeks, I've been to the urgent care twice, I've been to the ER, I've hit Walgreens to get my uh my uh son's stuff, my antibiotic.

It's just and then my son might lose his finger.

Like all this stuff's happening in my mind.

I'm thinking, this is definitely a Leah.

And in my mind, I'm thinking, I I don't I don't know if I deserve this.

Because I didn't move here because of what I wanted.

In fact, I loved what we did.

I I loved the life that we lived.

We were pretty comfortable.

We like I loved the church that we were planted in, the ministry that I was a part of, we loved the relationships that we had, and here we made this decision because of our love for God, and we wanted to be obedient to what he was calling us to, and then here I step out in obedience only to be met with a Leah.

You're like, this feels like since I'm being obedient, I'm stepping out in faith, that my life should look more like a Rachel.

This this feels like totally, there's nothing attractive about this.

I mean, I've got an infection in my mouth.

That ain't cute.

Say that ain't cute.

But my point in saying all that is that it it when you go through Leah's seasons, it's very easy to feel like God doesn't see you, like God doesn't hear you.

We're at my daughter's graduation party uh this past week, and uh and um uh they did their little uh awards, each of them got an award, and I'm like so proud of my daughter.

I'm like, God, I just I'm obsessed with her, I love her so much.

And she's just such a boss.

And so uh so she gets her award, she sits down, then they play this video of all the memories that her second grade class has created throughout the year, okay?

My daughter's only been there for a few weeks, so of course she's not part of any of these memories.

So I'm watching all these pictures of Halloween, the party they had, and then Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, and just all these really great moments that they created throughout the year.

Uh, and then and then I felt I'm like looking over at my daughter, and then I'm looking at these these, she's watching all these just memories unfold, and I started to feel sad, you know, because I'm like I feel bad for her.

You know, we've we've uprooted our family, and here she She's watching all these memories that she was not a part of, and I'm just sad.

And then I felt like the Lord almost interrupted, you know, that internal dialogue you have where you're just kind of wrestling, you're trying to process like what's happening in your mind.

I felt like the Lord almost interrupted my thoughts.

And I felt like He it gave me this impression that he was sad too.

I'm like, I immediately thought, well, why are you sad?

You could remove this Leah.

You could you could hear me, see me, you you could remove this Leah from my life.

And then I immediately thought of Hebrews chapter 4, verse 15.

Hebrews 4:15

The scripture says that we do not have a God who is unable to sympathize with our weakness.

Sometimes we think that God is up there, and it's almost like this sense of like, uh, yeah, there you go.

Deal with it.

That's not him.

No, in fact, I I felt like he was sad because I was sad.

And it and it changed my perspective on it.

That just because you've been dealt a Leah doesn't mean that God doesn't see you, that God doesn't hear you, and that he's not sympathetic towards whatever it is that you've been dealt.

I know Laban dealt you a Leah, and you thought that you should have had a Rachel.

But I'm here to tell you that God sees you, God hears you, and he is sympathetic.

Amen?

All right, the third child that Leah gives birth to.

I want to get to the end of this so bad.

It's so good.

You're not even ready.

I can tell you're not even ready.

You're not even ready.

Leah gives birth to Reuben so that we would know God sees you.

She gives birth to Simeon so that we would know God hears you.

And then she gives birth to Levi.

A birthday Levi, which means attached or joined.

The third lesson from Leah is number three, God is with you.

God is with you.

He's joined to you.

He's closer than you think.

He sees you, he hears you, he's with you.

The Leah seasons make you question all of this.

The Leah seasons make you feel like you're working sometimes against God and He's nowhere to be found.

When Jesus shows up four days late to Lazarus' funeral, Martha comes out to greet Jesus, but Mary doesn't.

Why?

Because she felt like God did not see her.

She felt like God did not hear her.

She felt like God was not with her.

In fact, Mary, you could say, was offended with the Lord.

You're like, how could you be offended with God?

We do it all the time.

We do it all the time.

And what I love is that God, God is not, um I'm trying to think of the best way to put this.

I I know how to put it that it would be like not very honoring, like God's a big boy, you know, like that's not the best way to say that.

But God, God is not, um, he's he's if you could say it this way, he's he's emotionally healthy.

You know what I'm saying?

Like he's not worked up by you being offended with him.

In fact, he actually would say, I understand.

I understand.

You're he's not the enemy.

Now the enemy would want you to make him the enemy, but he's not the enemy.

He's with you.

And so Mary's offended that God didn't show up.

And then the scripture says that as Jesus is looking at Mary, and she and he's looking at Martha, and he's seeing them cry and mourn over the death of their brother, we get the shortest verse in the Bible, John chapter 11, verse 35.

John 11:35

Jesus wept.

But it was after seeing the pain, seeing the sorrow, seeing the grief, that Jesus is moved with compassion and weeps.

But so often we get offended.

David, the man after God's heart, got offended with the Lord.

He didn't like the way that God handled something.

And so the scripture says that here he was in the process of taking the ark, the thing that carried God's presence.

He's carrying it back to his home.

Uh, David gets offended, and so he says, wait, puts the ark in some random guy's house, and then continues without God.

Goes back to his home for three months without the Lord, then comes back, gets the ark, and then eventually brings it back into the city of David.

Maybe that's why Jesus said, Blessed is he who is not offended because of me.

Because the Lord knew that we would have these moments where we would look at the Rachels in life and we would say, Why is why is that not my life?

Why is it that on the outside, man, that they seem so perfect.

They seem like they got it all together, but but my life looks more like a Leah.

And it's so easy to get offended with the Lord.

To think that, man, they've got it all together.

God's answering their prayers, God sees them, God hears them, but not me.

Hold on.

The fourth child.

We're going somewhere.

The fourth child that Leah gives birth to, Genesis chapter 29, verse 35.

Genesis 29:35

This time I will praise the Lord.

Therefore, she called his name.

Everybody say Judah.

Judah means praise.

There is a unique praise that can come from your Leah.

One of the greatest gifts of a Leah is Judah.

The Bible says that our sacrifice of praise has a fragrance to it.

Get a picture of that.

Our sacrifice of praise has an aroma.

It has a fragrance to it.

This is important because I don't know if you ever thought about this, but there will be certain things that you and I will not be able to do in heaven.

Think about this.

There will be certain things that we experience on earth that we will not experience in heaven, things that we can do on earth that we will not be able to do in heaven, okay?

One of those things that we will not be able to do in heaven is to praise God through pain.

And then now I want you to think about the aroma that comes from that kind of praise.

In heaven, you and I will not be able to praise God through suffering.

You and I will not be able to praise God through sorrow.

We won't be able to praise God through our Leah.

Because God has removed all pain, all sorrow.

There's no more mourning, there's no more crying.

And so the sacrifice of praise that we get to offer the Lord here on earth will have a fragrance and a scent, an aroma that we will not be able to recreate in heaven.

Leah, if you'll allow it, I'm trying to tell you, man, God He sees you, He hears you, He's with you.

Rachel doesn't want you to think that, but I'm telling you, God sees you, He's with you, He hears you, and if you'll receive that, there is a fragrance that can come from your praise.

That is, I think, just such a sweet aroma.

There's an aroma that comes from that that you and I will not be able to have that same opportunity when we get in heaven.

Look, I know you want Rachel.

Who doesn't?

Who doesn't want the Instagram perfect life?

Rachel's cute and she's so seductive.

She's also emotionally manipulative.

In Genesis 30, she emotionally manipulates Jacob and makes him feel bad for not being able to get her pregnant.

So Rachel is emotionally manipulative.

She has a way of controlling you through feelings.

She manipulates you into thinking that the grass is greener on the other side.

And that life, the life that she could offer you, would be so much better.

The Rachel life is very attractive on the outside.

She's cute.

But Rachel's also a thief.

In Genesis chapter 31, verse 19, Jacob takes his family and they're leaving Laban, and the scripture says that before they leave, Rachel goes into her dad's house, into Laban's house, and she steals all of her dad's household gods, all of the idols.

Genesis 31:19

She steals all of them.

So not only is Rachel a thief, she's an idol worshiper.

Yeah, but she's cute.

Yeah, but she's also a liar.

Laban comes out and asks where his household gods are at.

And the Bible says that Rachel hides them from her dad.

She's on a camel, and the scripture says that she's sitting on them.

So Laban comes and he's rummaging through all of Jacob's stuff.

He's convinced that Jacob has stolen his household gods, his idols.

And so while the scripture says Jacob's rummaging through this, and and and uh Rachel knows exactly what's happening.

She's sitting on these household gods right now.

The scripture says that she lies to her dad and she says, Sorry, dad, I can't get up right now.

It's my time of the month.

That's literally what she says.

Go read it.

So she lies.

Rachel in this perfect family myth, this perfect life, this perfect job, this perfect house is emotionally manipulative.

Rachel's a thief.

She's an idol worshiper, and she's a liar, but she's cute.

She manipulates us into thinking that the grass is greener on the other side, that everybody else has the perfect life, the perfect marriage, the perfect job.

She's a thief.

She steals precious time from us.

Time with our babies.

Yeah, I say this before, but it's amazing to me that God didn't make the Garden of Eden perfect.

Scripture said he made it good.

That's interesting.

See, God will give you good kids.

It's your job to make them perfect.

God will give you a good marriage, He'll give you a good spouse, He'll give you good friends, He'll give you a good church.

It's our job.

We have a responsibility to not despise the day of small beginnings, of humble beginnings.

I think God loves humble beginnings.

I think God loves small beginnings.

Why?

Because where God's gonna take you, you'll look back and you'll remember the day of small beginnings.

You'll remember the day of humble beginnings, and you will thank him.

You will know it had nothing to do with you, that it had everything to do with you not despising the Leah.

I want to close by looking at the way this story ends.

It's awesome.

I love it so much.

Rachel would eventually give birth to Joseph, to the dreamer.

And we know that this would be Jacob's favorite son.

Jacob loved Joseph, okay?

And I'm gonna pray that for you at the end.

I'm gonna pray that God would bring you into your Rachel season, that God would turn that around, that whatever the dream is, whatever the vision is, I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna agree with you in prayer.

But what I love about Jacob's story is that at the end of his life, what he concluded is staggering.

In Genesis chapter 49, Jacob is on his deathbed and he's blessing each of his sons.

Genesis 49 · chapter mention

He's going one by one and he's blessing each of them.

Then he gets to the very end and he gives his sons his burial instructions.

And he says, I want you to bury me next to my grandparents, Abraham and his wife Sarah.

And I want you to also bury me next to my parents, Isaac and his wife Rebecca.

Then he says, I want you to bury me next to Leah.

He says, Nothing about Rachel.

I just, my prayer for you going into today was that you would not despise your Leah.

I I know it's not what you would have chosen.

I know.

We we all have our Leah, we all do.

But what the enemy would want you to do is to think that God doesn't see you, that God doesn't hear you, that he's not with you.

Jacob concluded at the end of his life that he wanted to be buried next to Leah.

In his older years, he realizes what he couldn't see in his younger years.

In his younger years, he wanted Rachel, in his older years, he wanted Leah.

Time as a way of teaching you what's most important.

And what's most important isn't always what's most attractive.

I know you're mad at Laban for dealing you a Leah.

But if it had not been for Laban, Jacob would have been stuck with what he wanted instead of the thing that he needed.

See, I think that God knows the difference between our strongest desire and our deepest desire.

Those two things are not synonymous.

We have strong desires, but our strongest desire isn't always our deepest desire.

That's why when the scripture says that God gives you the desires of your heart, we a lot of times don't even know what those desires are.

And in fact, our job is not to even figure that out.

Read the verse before that.

The scripture says, delight yourself in the Lord.

He gives you the desires of your heart.

Our job is to not resent the Leah.

Don't fall into the lie and the trap of this rachel life that so often is painted.

Our job is to delight ourselves in the Lord.

And he reveals through that not just your strongest desires, but your deepest desires.

You know, I've noticed that a lot of times God will bring a laban in your life to get you to love the thing that you need instead of being obsessed with the thing that you want.

See, there's the reality is that the most fruitful things in our lives are often the least attractive.

Prayer is not the most attractive thing on the outside, but my God, is it fruitful?

Tithing is not the most attractive thing on the outside, but it's fruitful.

Confrontation is not attractive on the outside, but it's fruitful.

Accountability, who signs up for it?

Who likes accountability?

It's not attractive, but how many y'all know it's fruitful?

You know, the reality is that the attractive thing in life is usually not the most fruitful.

Think about this.

You have probably never heard somebody say, uh, you know how I really transformed my life?

That vacation to Hawaii?

Man, it was a game changer.

It just transformed my life.

I became more like Christ after that.

Right?

You've never heard somebody like ask him, like, man, you like meet like a really compassionate person, and you ask him, man, what made you so compassionate?

Money.

It was wealth.

It was just such a game changer.

I just became so compassionate.

I read this article, uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna land the plane here.

I read this article uh about Morse code, and Samuel Morris was, of course, the man that invented Morse code.

And Samuel Morris, uh, this is back in like the 1800s, he's in Washington, D.C.

And uh in the 1800s it took a while to communicate things.

And so uh he gets wind that his wife is really sick, and so he packs up his stuff and he immediately starts heading home.

Uh at this time, by the time that he gets home, he's too late.

His wife has already passed, and they've already had the funeral.

So this is a Leah.

He went to bed thinking one thing, and he wakes up to a whole different reality.

And then this is what's amazing about his story is that he uses this Leah and he creates what we now know as Morse code.

It ended up changing the way that the entire world communicated, and it was because the Leah that was dealt him.

Jacob is on his deathbed and he chooses Leah.

He learned the gift of Leah.

He learned that the secret to success is not Rachel, the secret to success is how you handle Leah.

Last story, and I'm done, I'm gonna pray for you.

There's a there's a guy uh that read about whose whose parents' house burned down, and he rushes into the house to try to save his parents, and he is not able to.

His parents end up passing, and he ends up getting severely burned, lots of terrible scars.

And what is it?

It's a Leah.

Here he's lost his parents, and then he is severely burned.

He went to bed thinking that his life was Rachel, and he wakes up next to Leah.

Well, because the man believed that he deserved the burns and the pain, he ended up locking himself in the bedroom and refused to come out because he felt such shame.

His wife and family were, of course, devastated by this.

They knew that it wasn't his fault.

His wife tried to find a doctor to fix his face and all the burns, the plastic surgery that it would take.

And most surgeons said that they could help him.

But the man felt like he didn't deserve it.

So the wife finds a surgeon and explains the story to the surgeon, brings him pictures, shows the pictures of her husband, of his of her husband, and the surgeon says, Yeah, I can fix his face.

I can make his face look normal.

But the woman says, I'm not asking you to fix his face.

I'm asking you to disfigure mine.

Maybe if I become like him, he won't close me out anymore.

He won't close the kids out.

The doctor was so moved by the story that he comes to the house, he knocks on the door, and he tells the man, I can fix your face, but I didn't come today to help you.

I came because your wife wants to disfigure herself so that you'll open the door.

And the man opens the door.

This is such a perfect picture of what Jesus has done for you and I.

The scripture said that he became sin, and in exchange he gave us his righteousness.

The creator submitted to his creation.

The Son of God put on flesh and walked among us, dwelt among us for 33 years.

He submitted to death, even death on a cross.

He was mocked, he was ridiculed, he was hated, he was spit on, the guards ripped the beard off of his face, he was stripped naked and shoved a crown of thorns over his head.

He died a brutal death.

There's nothing attractive about this death.

And what's amazing is that Jesus could have stopped all of it.

And he didn't.

He disfigured himself and he took on all of our sin, all of our shame, so that you and I would open up the door.

And I think there's a lot of people that because of their Leah, maybe you'd say, I love the Lord, I know the Lord, and you're going to heaven.

But there are some people that have bought into the lie of the enemy, and you've closed out maybe certain parts of your life because of a Leah.

And I just want to encourage you this weekend, Memorial Day weekend, God sees you, He hears you, He's with you, and He came, disfigured Himself, took on sin, so that you and I would open up every door of our heart, every part of our life.

Not 98%, not 99%, every single part.

It's amazing to me that out of all the different, you look at the lineage of Jesus, Jesus came from Leah.

The scripture says in Revelation 5:5 that he comes from the Lion of the tribe of.

Revelation 5:5

So Jesus came not from Rachel, from Leah.

And so the call to action, if you will, for us, for multiply, for Memorial Day weekend, is to look at your Leah and to try to see Jesus in it.

Can you see Jesus in your Leah?

Part of that's going to require you just to open up the door and just say, Lord, I would not have chosen this.

But I know that you see me, and I know that you hear me, and I know that you love me, and I know that you're with me.

And so I want you to come in, to take my Leah.

Let's go ahead and stand to our feet.

I'm gonna pray for you.

We're gonna go into a time of worship here in a second.

You know, I had this scripture on my way here that came to my mind.

There's this conversation that's happening between Paul and Barnabas, and they're talking to a bunch of a huge crowd.

And the scripture says that there was a part of, there was a group of people in this crowd that were jealous, and they started to combat some of the things that Paul was saying.

And Paul says to them, Because you have judged yourself unworthy.

That scripture that just jumped out on me.

That a lot of times we look at the Leahs in our life.

God's not judging you unworthy.

We judge ourselves unworthy.

And we think that we can't go start the business.

We can't have a great family.

We can't do any of these things, the Rachels that we look at, because we often judge ourselves unworthy.

Seeing Jesus in your Leah is to say, worthy is the Lamb.

Worthy is the Lamb.

I know that I can see my imperfections.

I can see the ways that I fall short.

But worthy is the Lamb.

And so, Father, in Jesus' name, Lord, I lift up all these precious people.

Lord, as we go back into a time of worship, God, we recognize that there is a fragrance to our praise.

There's an aroma to our praise.

God, in the context of our Leah, in the context of a pain.

Perhaps we've been deceived in some way.

Lord, in that context, we offer up a sacrifice of praise.

You see us, you hear us, and you're with us.

We thank you for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.