Blessed by the Fight // David Swart

Let me tell you briefly about this series we're doing right now.

Some of you may be wondering what this patriarch thing is about.

You're like, hey, no, I thought it was down for the patriot.

No, it's not.

Last year we were praying about where we should go this year from teaching the word of God and where are we at as a church?

What does he want to impart to us?

And there was a verse that that was on my mind a lot as we were thinking and praying through this from Luke chapter 24, when uh Jesus had risen from the dead and he was walking on the road to Emmaus, but his disciples hadn't all quite realized that he was risen.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

And scripture tells us on this road to Emmaus that he was walking with his two disciples, and it says that he was unpacking for them the things in the scripture concerning himself.

And when their eyes finally opened, they said this in verse 24, uh in verse 32, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures.

And at this point in the story of the church, the New Testament wasn't a thing yet.

The scriptures that we're talking about were the prophets and the books of Moses, Genesis, Deuteronomy, Exodus, uh, Exodus, New, uh, you got it, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Um, and the prophets, and he's talking about the Old Testament scriptures, and he was unpacking for them, it says, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

So we realized as we were had been going over the last few years preaching in this church, Romans was all of last year for us, we hadn't unpacked much of the Old Testament when it's three-quarters of the book.

So let's unpack it.

Let's take this year and begin to show us an arc of the story of God's dealing with these people and show how, like Jesus did, how all of the scriptures he is in it.

There's a foreshadowing of him, there's a there's an opening up of who Jesus was.

He's always been in the story from the very beginning.

And so that's our journey this year.

We're we're opening up, slowly going through the whole Old Testament, and we're picking out parts.

And so then I was wondering how do you do it?

Because um chat told me you can preach through the whole Bible in about 33 years successfully.

I'm like, okay, I'm not that committed to this project right now.

Uh, how about one year?

And so here's what what we found there's a verse in Matthew chapter 1, verse 17.

Matthew 1:17

Um, when Matthew unpacks the genealogy of Jesus, he goes through the story and the significant players along the genealogy of Jesus.

But then you're in verse 17.

Really, really cool verse for a math nerd like me.

Here it comes.

Matthew 1, 17.

Turn in your Bible, please, to Matthew 1.17.

Um, and it'll tell you this.

Are we ready yet?

Or is that computer glitching again?

Sam, is it you?

All right.

Here we go.

Matthew 1.17.

It is so cool.

It says this so all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ, 14 generations.

I was like, yes, this is cool.

Okay, so we started Genesis 1 through 12 in the first three months of the year, the story of the creation of the world all the way to Abraham.

Then we pick up for the next three months, we're going through from Abraham to David, and we're calling this three months the patriarchs.

We're looking at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, um, and the fellows, right?

All the way through, and that's gonna be the second quarter of this year.

Then we're gonna go from David to the deportation to the exile, and that's the period, the era of kings, right?

So we're gonna call it the kings, the era of the kings.

And we're gonna look at the kings of Israel and Judah.

That's a sad story, but we've got to look through the generations, and then in the last three months of the year, we're gonna go from the deportation to Jesus, the whole advent coming into that story.

We're working title right now for the last three months, no kings.

Maybe not, maybe not.

It may be too political.

We'll see how everybody feels about Trump at that point.

But um, all right, you're catching it now.

There you go.

Uh, but but from the deportation to Jesus, there were no kings in Israel.

There were there was no rulership, they were lost.

And so that's how we're gonna go through the Old Testament.

So we are now right here in the Patriarch's uh story, and we're in the first uh three weeks of the story.

Uh last two weeks covered a little bit about Abraham and Isaac, and today I'm going to try to cover all of Jacob in one week.

So, for the next few hours while we sit here, uh no, uh maybe not that long.

Um, but we're gonna look at Jacob.

Jacob is the man.

Uh Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, Jacob's name changed to Israel.

Israel is a very significant name, obviously, uh, in the history of God's people.

So he's he's an important character.

He is complicated, though.

We're gonna do a quick review of Jacob.

He's a complicated, he's not quite a villain, but he certainly is not a hero, uh, the man we meet.

He kind of spends most of his young life convinced that the only way to get what he needed was to take it.

A bit of a deceptive young man.

Uh, when he was born, he grabbed his twin brother's heel and came into the world with a little bit of a struggle like that.

In Genesis 25, he talks his twin brother Esau, who came first, out of his birthright for a cup of soup.

Like, okay.

Um, you and I may think, well, that's not all that, but a birthright in the ancient uh era was a significantly important thing that would determine your inheritance, would be it determined your place in the family.

Your birthright was a very significant thing that Esau gave up because he was hungry.

Then what he does is he deceives his dad.

His dad goes blind and is about to die, and his dad wants to speak a blessing over his sons, and he deceives his dad with the help of his mom, complicated family history over there, and he gets the blessing that Esau should have gotten.

Um, it's strange, and again, you and I are not familiar with receiving our father's blessing in a sense that it has a significant impact on your life, but it does have a significant impact on your life, and in this era especially, we see how that played out.

When your father blesses you, there it happens, it comes into being.

So that's him.

That's his deception.

That's what we know about Jacob when we get into the few stories that we're gonna look at today.

So he takes from his brother not just his birthright, but also his blessing.

His brother now wants to kill him.

We're at Genesis 27.

So Jacob is running, but he has nothing else.

He doesn't even have a place to sleep.

He is a fugitive running away from his brother.

He pulls out a rock out of the ground, uses it as a pillow, and he is completely and utterly alone, and he is about to have the most significant encounter with God of his life.

Now, here's what I want us to hold on to this morning as we go through this thread.

That God doesn't wait for us to become the right person before he shows up.

But he also doesn't leave you where you were when he does.

God doesn't wait for you to become the perfect right person.

I mean, you're gonna see this in the story.

At the point that God shows up to him, this dude was a deceiver.

That's about it.

And God shows up, and then he starts on this journey of formation, of transformation that God puts him through.

Would you open your Bibles to Genesis 28?

And at the same time, keep time, keep your finger at Genesis 32.

I want to look, I'm gonna read for us two stories.

One from Genesis 28, where uh Jacob has a dream known as Jacob's dream.

Um, and he calls it place Bethel.

And then we're gonna look at Genesis 32, where Jacob wrestles with God, and then I'm gonna talk about the in-between 20-year period.

So it's like a book end of he has this dream, he's fleeing.

The end, he has a wrestle with God, and what happens in that 20-year period, and that's the journey that we're gonna go on this morning.

So, Genesis 28 verse 10.

Genesis 28:10

Are you there?

Good.

Genesis 28, verse 10.

Genesis 28:10

Let me tell you something.

The sound of scriptures and the Bible's play turning is the most beautiful sound.

When you go to a place and they don't do that, and everyone pulls out their phone, you're like, Are they with me?

You guys are doing so good, wonderful.

All right, 28 verse 10.

Uh, here we go.

Jacob left Beersheba and went towards Haran.

Everybody remember Haran?

Haran, remember in our Genesis series, Abraham had left Ur to go to Canaan, but he took a detour to Haran, and it was there that God told him to get out of Haran to go towards Canaan.

Haran is a very significant place where it seems these patriarchs all have a bit of a detour stop at.

Okay, verse 11.

And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set.

Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and laid down in that place to sleep.

And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your offspring.

Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you, your offspring, shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Very similar to the promise to Abraham.

Verse 15 Behold, I am with you, and I will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you to this land.

For I will not leave you until I have what done what I have promised you.

Let's pause there.

Let's jump to chapter 32.

So, in this first story, he's at the place which he calls Bethel.

The second story, 20 years later, we're in chapter 32, and let's begin at verse 24.

And Jacob was left alone, and the man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.

When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

Then he said, Let me go, for the day has broken.

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

And he said to him, What is your name?

And he said, Jacob.

Then he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.

And Jacob asked him, Please tell me your name.

And he said, Why is it that you ask my name?

And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.

Let's stop there.

Two encounters, 20 years apart, and a world of formation and just learning that we can get in this story.

Let's start with the first place.

Bethel.

God finds the fugitive in this place called Bethel.

And the first thing I want us to kind of pay attention to this, and I've alluded to this just a little bit, it's the timing.

It's the timing.

Jacob had just deceived his dying blind father.

He's stolen from his brother what belonged to him, and he's run for his life.

He falls asleep on the rock, exhausted alone in the dark.

And there, God gives him the full covenant which he promised to Abraham and to Isaac.

Like, dang, that is something else.

Hadn't accomplished anything.

There was nothing spectacular about this guy.

Actually, there was quite a few things wrong with him.

There's quite a bit of inner healing that this man needs and some outer healing as well.

And it was coming.

The lamb, the descendant is the promise.

I mean, everything that God swore to Abraham and to Isaac, he gives to him with no conditions, no prerequisite repentance, no get your life together first, Jacob.

Jacob is asleep.

He's not even seeking God.

And God finds him and breaks into his life and gives him this promise.

It's incredible.

The word ladder, we is translated as ladder.

The Hebrew word is Sulam.

And it appears only once in the Bible, but the way the ancient world would have heard it, it sounds a bit like a processional ramp on a ziggurat.

Another old word, right?

If you were with us when we preached on Babel, Babel was uh very similar, they think, to what the Mesopotamians had built called ziggurats, where they had these structures where they built up staircases to a place where there was this holy place at the top where they could interact with their gods.

In a sense, they were building a ziggurat so that they could ascend and get closer to their gods and have a holy place for him.

This was very similar.

They would have understood it very similarly, except opposite.

Instead of it coming from the ground up, coming up to try and meet God, the picture we see here is God coming down, wanting to meet with man.

God coming down wanting to meet with Jacob.

It is the exact opposite of the ziggurat.

Heaven comes down, God builds the bridge.

The direction of this is everything.

Now you may be thinking, well, if God is meeting this deceiver and giving this incredible blessing, isn't that sending the wrong message?

Kind of like, hey, you go do you, and uh, you know, God will find at the right time he'll come down and bless you, and you know, everything will be okay from there.

But we've got to look at what the text is actually doing here.

The point isn't that the deception is fine, the point is that that grace precedes the transformation that it intends to produce.

Grace precedes the transformation that he's calling Jacob into, but he speaks it over him first.

He shows up first.

When Jesus was baptized, before Jesus has started any of his ministry, he gets baptized, he hears the voice of the Father.

This is my son, whom I love and in whom I'm well pleased.

Hadn't accomplished anything, and you're in my terms of significance, hadn't done anything yet of significance, but the father comes down and speaks.

This is my son whom I love.

This is the picture of grace, this is the picture of the gospel we see right here with this man in his sleep.

And then Jacob makes this strange vow with God, verse 20 through 22.

If you wanted to read it, but I paraphrase a little bit, it kind of like if God will be with me and I will keep it, then then then he will be my God, and I will give him a full tenth of all I have.

A mention of tithing, in a sense, before Moses, before the law comes along.

In honor, he's like, if you you know, if you do this, I will do this, and and I'll give you a tenth.

It almost sounds like bargaining, uh, like he's having this negotiation with the Lord.

Some commentators read this as faith, other commentators read it as a bargain.

I think it's probably a little bit of both.

If we had to be honest with ourselves, if I had to be honest with you, it's sometimes how I have approached the Lord.

Lord, if you do this, if you do that, then I will give you this and I'll give you that.

My heart is, yes, I want to serve him, but I'm also trying to get something out of this.

Um if you're with me on that, there's maybe a few of us in the room in that way.

God, if you answer this prayer, man, then I'll go all in.

God, if you do so and so, man, then I will give you this and that.

And this is the grace of God.

He works with this.

He works with it.

He's like, All right, let's go.

And he takes Jacob on a journey.

Now, it's an interesting journey, but here's the important part the grace that finds you in your worst moment, friends, is not a reward for your worst moments, it's grace.

And our question we need to answer is will we receive it?

Will we receive that grace and be drawn by that grace into the place God wants us to go?

Amen.

The second movement I want to go us through here.

So we looked at Bethel for a minute.

Next place I want us to look at is Haran.

This is where God forms the deceiver.

Now, this is the hard part of our journey.

This is a hard part of Jacob's journey.

All right, bit of a douchebag, right?

But but God finds him.

Is that bad?

It's not, right?

Yes, I don't always know which is the bad words, you know.

I do.

I'm lying, I'm sorry.

Bit of a douchebag.

God gives him this promise, and here the journey begins.

He finds, he wants to find a girl.

So we're we're going to the chapter from 28.

We get into chapter 29.

Go read it.

He acts like a teenager.

He's like he gets to the water and he sees the girl.

He's like, ah, she's so amazing.

And he just wants to give everything up for her.

And and he says, What can I do?

I want to find this girl.

Jacob lands into the hands of a more sophisticated version of himself.

Laban.

He's like, Oh yeah, I'll give you my girl.

Uh, work for her for seven years.

We'll we'll have a little ceremony and everything, but you're gonna work for her for seven years.

He's like, good, all good.

Now, here's the part that we're gonna have a discussion with the Lord when I get to heaven.

I need to understand this a little bit better.

I don't quite have the right color.

But how do you get married and realize the next day it's the wrong girl?

I got questions.

I got questions.

I mean, how dark was it?

You know what I'm saying?

Like, had you ever talked to her before?

Surely, if she said, Hey Jacob, you you realize this is not my girl.

I got questions.

It's not the point of the story, so we're just gonna move on there.

Um 20 years, 20 years, this guy ends up working not just for the lady of his dreams, but for his father-in-law, who seems to be a little bit more cunning than Jacob.

He gets 20 years of free labor out of it and quite a lot of prosperity because God was still with Jacob, and it seemed that everything Jacob did flourished.

So Laban's like, man, I'm getting more sheep than I've ever gotten before.

I got my two girls married off, so all is good.

Let's just keep this this cow and milk it, you know.

Uh that's weird.

So uh we'll move on.

I've I've pondered this text for a long time because for a while there I was feeling sorry for Jacob.

I'm like, this is not a this is not fair, man.

Uh here he is, he just wanted the girl of his dreams, and he got promised one thing, got given another thing, and there, but but it's amazing how similar Laban was to Jacob.

Now, I don't want to call this karma because I don't believe in karma, but it seems like the Lord will use some of these circumstances to begin to work formation in you and I.

Scripture would call this perhaps discipline, not punishment, formation through consequence.

Even though it seemed like Jacob was getting the short end of this deal, if you step back a little bit, Jacob in those 20 years grew much in wealth.

God bless them.

Also, if you are familiar with the Christian story, Israel essentially has 12 tribes named after the 12 sons of Jacob.

Eleven of those sons were born during this 20-year period.

There was a blessing, there was a working of what God was doing while he was under Laban, while his quote-unquote prayers were not being answered.

While he was like, man, this feels like persecution, this isn't fair, you know.

Sure, I ran away from my brother, he wanted to kill me, but but here I am and I'm I'm working hard, and this man is deceptive.

It must have felt very unfair to him.

But in the midst of that, God was working in Laban in Jacob.

God was working in him and for him.

Now, some of you may be in the middle of something that feels like a detour.

A huran, like you are in this place, like this was not the intention.

I was supposed to do this and move on with my life and go to greener postures.

Perhaps the job you have costs you more than you planned.

Perhaps the relationships that you're in are harder than it looked, or the circumstances you're in has no clear ending to it.

And sometimes not knowing when this is gonna end is hard.

Perhaps you're getting disillusioned with God that He's not answering your prayers.

But I want us to look at the story for a minute and say and ask ourselves: is it just that he's not answering my prayers, or is he just not answering it the way I want him to?

The most formative work God does in our lives often looks like he's gone silent on the big prayer, the big question we have in front of him.

Got a little bit of experience with this, and I could say this with all confidence, even in these difficult seasons of your life, he's always there.

His presence is always there.

I'm always able to go to church and encounter the Lord or or open my Bible and and you know pray and know his presence.

Like I know that.

But my bigger question is, God, when am I getting out of this situation?

Why aren't you answering that prayer?

When the Lord is, I'm working.

I'm working on something.

Kathy and I got married um 26 years ago, and just before we got married, I got this job in in South Africa, and I was under a boss who um he was a Pakistani man who'd just moved his family from Pakistan to Canada and they were moving citizenship, but he was working for this big multinational corporate that I was working at, and so he was stationed in South Africa.

So, family values, I don't know, he was gonna see his family in seven years.

So he got an apartment right next to the company, and he was there from eight in the morning till ten at night, six days a week, and he expected me to be there, and I'm like, no, I don't want to, but that's what you do.

I was early on in my career and newly married, working 12 to sometimes 14 hours a day, often six days a week, sometimes seven days a week, for something like three years.

And my prayer was almost daily, God, why are you putting me in this situation?

Why are you not pulling me out?

Why am I going through this season?

I'm newly married, I'm I'm going through a lot, and and I was wrestling with God.

And sure, I could have tried to find another job, but in prayer, it wasn't like this is not the right time.

Like just stay the course made no sense to me.

In hindsight, I was in Haran.

I was learning, I was being formed.

I was learning a job discipline, a work discipline that took me through a very long career in finance, but I had to be formed in those periods of time.

Leaving home at 5:30 in the morning, getting home at 8, 9 o'clock at night as a newly married man, that was not fun, you know.

Being involved in the church still, so that was another journey.

But anyway, the Lord forms us in that.

I knew his presence.

We leading worship, it was awesome.

I mean, I knew the presence of the Lord, especially when you're getting squeezed.

But why didn't he answer my prayer?

I couldn't see it until much, much later.

He was forming me.

I don't know where you're at, friends.

Where's the squeezing at?

Where is the who is the labor in your life?

What's the situation in your life?

I know many of you are young and perhaps not quite stepped into your careers, but there's things that you're faced and are facing that you're not getting a direct correlation answer from the Lord for.

I want to tell you, hold on, hold on.

He is forming.

He is forming, he is building, he is shaping you.

You can know his presence daily.

But we don't always know the big question as he works in us.

Katie McMund spoke at the women's event yesterday.

She said the goal of his work in us is fruit, not fast food.

Like, oh, I don't like that.

Okay, third movement here.

Are you okay?

You okay?

Third movement.

Let's get a penil.

It's not Penang for you uh Hunger Games fans.

Penang, isn't that?

No.

Focus, guys, focus.

Uh Pennyal, God blesses the wrestler.

God blesses the wrestler.

We're in uh back in Genesis 32.

Jacob finally gets away after 20 years and he essentially flees Laban.

He can't get back there.

But he's stuck between a rock and a hard place.

He can't go back to Laban.

He knows he has to go the way of Esau.

The last time he spoke with Esau, Esau wanted to kill him.

He's like, how am I gonna do this?

He's on this journey.

He sees Esau coming towards him with 400 men.

He is afraid.

He is afraid.

I can't go this way, I can't go this way, I am stuck.

So we find ourselves in this story where he sends his family ahead of him, kind of in a sense, buys himself a little bit of quiet time so that he can figure out what the next step is.

That's my interpretation.

Very much in fear and in need of help from God.

There, in the dark, without warning, go read the scriptures.

I had to go back to this again.

A man grabbed him.

I always thought he saw this angel or he saw this man and he's like, let's have it on, but he and he like tackles the guy.

No, the man started the fight with him.

The man grabbed him.

Why?

I don't know, I don't know why, but but I'm I'm picturing the scene.

So forgive me a little bit of license here, but here's a situation where he is stuck.

He is has has gone through a 20-year journey.

He's got his brother heading towards him with 400 men, and he is in a lot of fear.

He's like, I need to be alone and figure out what this is.

And there the Lord grabs him.

The Lord breaks in again.

The Lord comes in again.

He's sleeping again, and there the Lord comes and gives him like the dream.

Here he comes, and this time he wrestles with him.

It is face to face.

We see here in the story that the man they start wrestling almost all night long.

And the man, it says, touches his hip, which is a great downplayment of the word.

The word isn't touching, the word is uh elsewhere translated as a targeted, deliberate strike.

So they're having this fight, and in the case he takes this man and he takes his side and he knocks him so hard that he dislocates his whole joint from his hip bone.

He has to be in extreme pain.

What does Jacob do?

He holds on to the man.

He's still he's pain.

This is a spit zone right here.

I hope you're okay.

All right, I'll come to the side.

You can have some fun.

Um I'm so sorry.

Is that you okay?

Yeah, get a poncho somewhere in the back.

Uh focus, David, focus.

Where were we?

Okay, so he's having this fight, right?

And and and here's the man, and he's in pain, and and and he's like, I will not let you go.

He said, You must let me go.

The day is almost in.

I will not let you go until you bless me.

What does the man say to him then?

The question then is the pivot moment here.

He says to him, What is your name?

Did you see that?

What is your name?

This is not like a meet and greet, friends.

This isn't like networking.

Hey, what's your name?

You know, he's trying to get to the essence of who Jacob is.

And he wants Jacob to admit who he is.

Because your name in ancient times meant your essence.

It meant who you are.

Your name meant something.

I would say it still means something today, but in the old scriptures, we see it, it defined who you were.

It defined the essence of who you were.

Jacob meant heel grabber, deceiver.

So when he finally said, My name is Jacob, he finally honestly identified who he was.

No performance, no disguise, no managing the optics.

Just this is who I am.

I want to tell us, friends, we need to become honest with who we truly are.

You want the blessing from the Lord, you want the healing from the Lord.

Get honest with him.

Stop the facade, the image that, oh Lord, I'll come with my piousness.

He knows who you are.

He wants you to admit it.

He wants you to be honest with who you are.

The very next scene, your name shall no longer be Jacob, the man says to him, but Israel, the one who strives with God, and a whole nation to this day carries the name, this same story, the man who strives with God, limping, marked, yet prevailing.

And Jacob there renames the place, Penil, face of God, because he looked at God and lived.

He won by losing.

He won by surrendering to the Lord.

He won by submitting himself to the Lord.

Now, maybe you read this and you think, moral of the story, if I just pray hard enough, wrestle hard enough, you know, do intercession hard enough.

This scripture is often used to teach us about intercession, about prevailing and travailing in prayer with the Lord.

And I think it's helpful, but that's not the point here.

Jacob is not trying to extract a blessing from a reluctant God.

That man could have changed, ended the story at any moment during the night.

He was trying to get something out of Jacob to admit who he is.

That phrase, I was just hearing it in worship again.

When the student is ready, the teacher comes.

Have you heard that before?

I think he finally had a ready student.

Was done running, was in fear, and was finally humble enough to face what he needed to face.

Trying to illustrate this a little bit, but again, for give me a little bit of license here, but imagine you're that man and you're you're stuck between death and a past, and you know who you are, you know what you've done, and here he is in this place alone, and the man of God comes to him, and I'm using Sean, and he says, Hey, grabs him.

He didn't say this in scripture, but this is what I'm imagining.

We need to talk.

We need to deal with something.

You've been running for 20 years, you've been deceiving your whole life.

We need to deal with this right now.

We need to call out what what it is, who you are, how you've been identifying yourself.

Come on.

And I think that's why God is initiating the story.

That's why God is initiating the struggle.

Man, there's something in your life.

We gotta deal with something.

Jackson, I'm looking at you.

This is intense, but please.

The Lord wants to deal with something.

I think he wants to grab each one of us right now.

Who are you?

What's your name?

What's your story?

What do you think you're bringing to this equation?

Let's put it out there and let's hear what he says over you.

Let's see what he says over you.

And and can we be like Jacob?

We're like, hey, we need to talk.

Are we gonna be like, I'm out?

No, not now.

I'm not ready.

Or we're gonna be like Jacob that's like, I'll get you.

Let's go, let's go.

And they wrestle all night.

The word wrestle there is is quite literally in the dust.

Picture these two men wrestling in the dust all throughout the night.

Travailing in prayer, travailing, and I will not let you go until you bless me.

I think it's the hunger that gets us to that point.

Sometimes I come to the Lord and say, Lord, I really need the XYZ.

And I'm like, Lord, please, and I pray for like seven minutes and it doesn't happen.

I'm like, all right, peace out, you know, like maybe maybe he doesn't love me, and I and I just carry on with my life.

But can we prevail, travail?

Can we wrestle with the Lord and get to the core of the issue?

And you're not twisting God's arm, you're just wrestling with who you are.

And the Father wants to bless you.

He wants to bless you, but he needs your attention.

Amen.

He needs your attention.

Jesus quotes Jacob's dream in John chapter 1, verse 51.

John 1:51

He says, You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

He's quoting it directly.

He says, You know that stairway that Jacob dreamed about?

That's me.

He is the stairway.

He is the one who bridges the gap from the promise to the future.

He is the one.

He is the one who takes us from death into life.

He is the contact point between heaven and earth.

The figure that Jacob was wrestling at Jabbak, some of the early church fathers like Tertillion or Calvin, they said this was perhaps the pre-incarnate appearance of the Son of God could be.

In this case, he's called a man in Hosea.

Hosea calls him God.

He wrestled with God.

Even Jacob himself said, I saw the face of God and didn't die.

Could be.

But in a sense, God came in human form, in some form to wrestle with man.

This is the picture of Jesus who came from heaven to earth to walk with us, to do life with us, to redeem us.

He came to our dust and he made a way for us.

He is the way.

He limps for the rest of his life, and that limp never heals.

The mark of that encounter stays with him forever.

Look at the story of Jesus.

Jesus comes down on the cross, walks into our territory, into and takes our consequences, our mud on himself, and he's the one who walks away with the permanent wound.

When he was resurrected, the scars were still in his hand.

Thomas wanted to see it, touch it.

He walks away with the wound.

Jesus crosses into our territory and walks away with our wound on his body so that we could cross into his.

What if God has been in that whole process the whole time?

What if this is formation, not a detour?

What if he is taking you through Iran to build and work something in you for his benefit?

I know I've gone a little long today.

But before I close, I need to ask you.

That sin came and separated us from him because of sin, your sin, my sin, Adam and Eve's sin.

Because of that sin, we are separated from God.

And he has been on this rescue mission over and over, building ladders, building bridges, building a cross so that we could come and have life again.

The gospel message is the good news that you can.

But the good news includes the way.

It's through the door.

It's through Jesus.

Jesus identifies himself as the door, the way, the truth, the life.

The way you and I can have reconciliation with God and step into the life that he has for you and I is through Jesus.

It's through repentance, a recognition of your name, and an acknowledgement of his, the Son of God.

So I want to invite you in.

I don't know who brought you to church, I don't know what where you are on your journey, but I'd like to invite you all just close your eyes for a second because I want to pray with you.

If if you would like to receive the life that Jesus offers, it is a receiving.

It is a receiving.

And I'm gonna lead you in a prayer, and these are no magic words I'm saying.

They're just giving you some language to begin to be honest with God and to receive His Son.

So with every eye still closed, who would like to give their life to Jesus today?

Who would like to submit, surrender their lives?

If you put your hand up, I know who I'm praying with.

And it doesn't mean you're joining this church, friends.

It means you're joining the family of God, you're joining eternal life with Him.

Who can I pray with today?

I would tell you this is the most important question decision you'll ever make is who you will follow, who you belong to.

Anyone I can pray with you today?

Can I invite us to stand up, church?

I believe the Lord wants to minister to you today.

If you're in some of these camps, perhaps you're at Bethel and you're getting a download from the Lord and your eyes are opening and you're beginning to receive prophetic promises from the Lord.

What a special, special time in your life to treasure what the Lord is saying to you.

Perhaps some of you are in Haran and you're going through it, and your life feels unfair, or you're trying to hear God's voice in the middle of the mundane.

This formation journey feels too long for you.

We want to pray with you.

We want to stand with you.

Our prayer ministry team is gonna be up front here.

Just like to encourage you in the Lord for where you are on your journey.

And perhaps you're in Penil and you're wrestled with God or you're wrestling with God.

There is something you and Him are having a go about.

And you need strength.

You need strength to carry on.

We'd love to pray with you.

And I want to pray over us as a church, and then we're gonna sing one more song together.

Prayer ministry team will be up here, but let me pray.

Dear Father, I thank you, I thank you, I thank you for this grace just displayed in these stories, the goodness of the Lord that calls us and shapes us and transforms us.

Lord, I pray this morning that each one of us would recognize where we are and hold on, receive the grace of the Lord in this season.

I pray for strength, Lord, for every man and woman in this building who feels like their strength has run out.

I pray for eyes to be open to see the working of the Lord in their life in this season.

And Father, I pray for an awareness of the presence of God like never before, to know that you never leave us and never forsake us, even in the hard chapters.

Lord, we surrender to you.

We surrender our all to you, we surrender our whole selves to you.

May you be glorified.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.