Genesis Week 32 • Turning Tragedy into Triumph

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Well, happy mother's day.

You're welcome. You're welcome. I kind of paused like you were

gonna say that back, you know, and that would have been weird. So I'm glad

that you didn't. All right, if you have your bibles, and I hope you do, please

join me in Genesis, chapter 28 as

Genesis 28 · chapter mention

you turn there. I've been the pastor. father's Day will be eleven

years here, and I believe I've said the same thing for

every mother's, day that, God has blessed me

with the opportunity to be here. Today is a

wonderful day as we will celebrate

moms. my mother in law is here with us

today. Afterwards, we're gonna go out to dinner, to

celebrate her, to celebrate Erin, to, celebrate my sister

in law and her mom. They're all going to be there together

with us. Yesterday, Grayson, had a

track meet in Somerville, so we were down there. My

mom came and was a part of that and took her out

and celebrated her and just a wonderful time

of celebration of what that looks like on this

day, as moms are so valuable,

and precious to us. And so, on behalf of all of

us, just thank you, moms, for all that you do, for how you

serve, for how you care, for how you love.

we greatly appreciate it, and you are truly a, ah,

blessing from the Lord.

All right. so I wanna say that. But I also wanna say this. I

also wanna recognize that today, while it is a wonderful

day to celebrate moms, sometimes today is a

difficult day as well. All right. I grew up in a

home. I've shared this story many times. My mom's

mom, she passed away when my mom was 15.

my mom came home from school one day and she found her mom

there had passed away from a massive heart attack.

My wife and I, Aaron struggled with

miscarriage and infertility, and

Mother's Day was a hard day for her as

well. and so I grew up and have known,

mother's day to be a, day of great

joy, but also a day of mixed

emotions and grieving and processing. but also in

the almost eleven years that I've been here, I've

had the honor to serve some of our families

on some of the saddest days and weeks of their

life. as they've, moms and

dads have had to bury, their children.

So, today I come, with

two greetings, one, of

appreciation and blessing that moms are, but

also, if today is a heavy day for you

because of many different reasons, some,

that I just listed. please know that

our heart is for you. And I do

hope, that maybe today, God can use his

word to speak a word of encouragement to you.

If today is a little bit more difficult day, than

normal for you, before we go dive into the

Lord's word this morning, let's, go to the Lord in

prayer. God, I come to you today, Lord, and

I thank you, for today. It is such a

blessing and wonderful honor to be here,

Lord, to worship you, to sing

songs, to you, to sing songs about

you, or to open your word to gather

with our church family, Lord, what a wonderful

day it is, Lord. Lord, I thank you for the moms

that we have, moms that raised

us, moms that loved us, moms

that discipled us, moms that

cared for us. Lord, what a wonderful blessing

and picture of the gospel of them as they

came alongside and just did so many things

to point us to the truth of the gospel. Lord, I thank you for

the mom that you blessed with. I thank you for her

love, for you. I thank you for her love

for me. I thank you for her love for my dad,

and what that has looked like and how that has molded,

and shaped me to be the husband, father,

pastor, friend, follower of Christ that I am.

Lord, I thank you for my mother in law, for who she is,

how she invests. Lord, I thank you for my wife. I

thank you for her place in our

family, her leadership, her guidance, her love.

Lord, and I thank you for all the mothers that we. That we

have here in the room. God, I also lift up those

that today is a day of struggle. Today is a

day of tears, Lord. Today

cannot, replace what they are

missing. But, Lord, I pray that in their sorrow,

they will find comfort, in Christ and in Christ

alone. And so, God, as we open your word this

morning, as we gather together as a church family, or

may the truth of your word, not simply just

ring true as it does, but may it penetrate to

the deep areas of our heart, transforming

us for the work of the gospel. And may we live for your

glory in your name. And it's in Jesus name we

pray. Amen.

Well, as we continue on in

Genesis, we looked at last week. And you'll

see this is kind of a common theme as we look through the

Bible. it would be really, okay if we always

opened scripture and found really

functional, operating, well put together

families. But oftentimes what we find is we find

the dysfunction of a lot of the families that we see.

And I hope that brings you a little bit comfort.

Right? When you look at your family, when you look at where you came

from and your reality of what you deal with. And that's

what we saw last week. We see this family

chosen by God, but living in

dysfunction. And their dysfunction comes out

of the deception that is created and

that is fostered and that is nurtured and that is

continued on in their family. We see Isaac and

Esau plotting. We see Rebekah,

and Jacob plotting, and their plots become

exposed. We see parents grieve. and then

it ended with one brother pledging

to kill another. And so what we were able

to draw from what we look and see is we

see from scripture what we see bad guys,

but a good God. And this good God gives grace

and gives mercy, and his plan holds true.

True. And in spite of all that is

attempting to unfold, we see the

triumphal victory of God continually

all throughout. Like, when we look at the Bible and we see the narrative

of scripture, right, the victory of God just isn't found

in revelation, even though we see the victory of God

there. But the victory of God is all the way through. God

says, this is what I'm gonna do. God's gonna do it. He's gonna bring glory

and honor to his name, right? In Christ, we stand in

victory. This is who we are in him.

And so this is what we see. The victory of. God's not

dependent on bad guys trying to do enough good

things, but the victory of God is dependent on the goodness of

God and who he is. And the grace of God is that he

takes bad people, he makes them good. He uses them

in spite of their shortcomings, in spite of their sins,

in spite of their failures, for his name, for his glory, for

his power. And we stand in the good grace of

that, which is why we're here. None of us deserve the grace of

God, but God gives us to us, and. Yes, and amen.

He uses us for his name

and for his glory. And so we continue on

with this story of this family

and this family, while we can look at it on this

side and see the victory that's there. They're

living in the difficulty of the reality

of the events of this deceit that's

unfolded before them.

So let's continue on. We're gonna read, the first nine verses

of Genesis 28. It says, then

Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed

him, you must not take a wife from the

canaanite women. Arise and go to

Padnanim Aram, to the house of Bethel, your

mother's father, and take as your wife from

there one of the daughters of Laban, your

mother's brother. God almighty bless

you and make you fruitful and

multiply you. That you may become a company

of peoples. And he give, may

he give the blessing of Abraham to you and

to your offspring with you. That you may take

possession of the land of your sojournings

that God gave to Abraham. Thus, Isaac

sent Jacob away, and he went to Padna Maram, to

Laban, the son of Bethel, to Aramean, the

brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's

mother. Now, Esau saw that Isaac

had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padna

Maram to take a wife from there. And that

as he blessed him, he directed him, you must not take a

wife from the canaanite women. And that Jacob had

obeyed his father and his mother and God to Padna

Aram. So when Esau saw that the

canaanite women did not please, Isaac, his

father, Esau went to Ishmael. That name

has now come back and took as his

wife. Besides the wives, he

had Mehletha, daughter of

Ishmael, Abraham's son, the

sister of Nebiath. So what

we see here is lies and

deceit have hit this family.

And what we see in these first nine

verses is not the great

happiness of what a mother and father hope

to. In this, we

see, Esau wants to kill Jacob.

Jacob sent away. Esau lives, chooses

to live in rebellion against his family,

against God of all that's there.

A family, the family of promise,

the family of this is what God is going to do,

is choosing to live in the midst of their sin

and in their deceit. And we see that

tragedy is here, the

rebellion that we find. But, what

we find in scripture of what

God does, of how God works and what God is doing

is God doesn't just look at tragedy and leave

tragedy there for tragedy's sake. What God works and does

is God turns tragedy into

triumph. God takes what is

the Mess and says, watch how I'm going to

work and watch what I'm going to do. God

takes the deepest, darkest days of your

life and of your reality and says, I'm not going to

waste that. I'm going to take this and I'm going to work,

and I'm going to move, and this is what I'm going to do. This is what

you've created, but this is what I'm going to

allow. This is what I'm going to cause to become for my

name and for my glory. And the Bible is filled with

this, not just found in Genesis, but the Bible is filled

with God taking what looks like defeat

and turning the defeat into

victory, but victory for his

name and for his name's sake. Right? The

overall story, the sin of David with

BAthSHeba, and what comes from that

in that moment of everything that's there,

of the death, of the lies, of the destruction of what's

there. But on this side, what we can look and see is some

of the most heart heavy passages that we

find in scripture about forgiveness

and grace are found as a result of David

walking through this. And then God and his goodness and his

kindness and his grace and his mercy, drawing

David to repentance, bringing David into

the relationship of, forgiveness. What we see

in the New Testament, we see Saul, who would become the

apostle Paul, but as Saul, the mastermind,

more knowledge of the Old Testament, staunch

jewish leader who was persecuting christians

imprisonment and in death. And what God

does is he says, let me take this tragedy

of what's. And I'm gonna take Saul, and I'm gonna make him

Paul. And what Paul becomes in the power and

the goodness of Christ is two things. The greatest church

planner the world has ever known, to see the

gospel spread all over the known

world in these moments, and arguably the

greatest theologian that we could hold

to the power and the work of God, of what God is

doing. Saul didn't earn this. Saul

didn't earn becoming Paul. God said, I'm gonna take you, and I'm gonna turn you from

Saul to Paul, and this is what I'm gonna do.

We see Jesus with the woman at the well,

the samaritan woman, the sinful

woman, the woman who no one

would want to talk to, the woman who no one would want to be a part of. And then

she meets Christ,

and they have a conversation. And

he takes the person who was

afraid to speak to anyone,

hiding herself during the heat of the

day, and he turns her into an evangelist

for his city. See the work of

what God does. We see Jesus

friend Lazarus dead for four

days. The Bible says that he had begun to

stink, and Jesus

raises him from dead. We see the

IsRaelites led from captivity into freedom.

Pharaoh's army pursues them. When the army

reaches them, there's nowhere for them to turn.

Blocks them. The army, of

the Egyptians, is on the other side. We see

what is going to happen, what is going to take place. And so God

steps into the moment, and he parts the seas, and

they walk, and God leads them to freedom.

The Bible is not a story

of tragedy. Your

life and my life are not

stories of tragedy. When

we are found in

Christ, when the tragedy

is there, it's done and it's over with.

But when there's Christ, there's

victory. And it's hard for us to see

that. My father in law is

here with my mother in law this morning.

my wife told me years ago, and y'all know this, that I had to get clearance

to tell stories about her and my

kids, and so I get permission for that. My

father in law has never said that to me. So I would like

to tell a story of my father in law, that

he's got that grin like, boy, I can still take

you. And I think he can. All

right. but, Aaron and I, when we met in

college, my father in law, retired

pastor, and retired from the military,

and when we met, my father in law was not

long for being deployed, to

Iraq, during the war that was

there. And so, actually, we dated for

several months, and then we got engaged. And my father in law was

deployed, and was gone for

almost all of our engagement. He came back about a month

before we got married to officiate the

wedding. and my father in law,

I like to, like, graciously describe

him as, like,

redneck MacGyver,

right? He can take

anything and fix it.

Like, he has been that for me

so often, in our marriage, especially

early on. But still to this day, he can take

anything and fix it. And it might not be the

way that the factory would fix it, but it's the way that

Mark Reiser fixes it, you know? And

so he gets it, and he gets it done, and he gets the job

there over and over and over again. He has been

that guy to. When the emergency, when the

break happens, I can call him, he's there, he takes care of it, he

fixes it. He's driven to numerous times, to

Sumter, to Irmo, to Lexington

faithful, over and over and over again. But, like, the longer

I've been married, the longer, like, I'm like. But I want

to fix it. I

want to learn. Like, I love my father

in law, but he won't always be around. And I need

to know how to do some things, too. And so

I remember we were living in Aiken, and I had a weed eater

that was broke, and I'd seen my father in law fix

things like this all the time. And I thought, I can fix

this. And so I started

trying to assess the problem.

So I went and got my tools, screwdrivers,

wrenches, and I start taking the weed

eater apart. I got the

weed eater completely taken

apart. All the screws were laid

out. All the parts are spread out

all over the garage floor.

And I looked at it and I thought,

I have no clue what is

wrong with this weed eater.

But here's what I did know.

I knew that my father in law could fix it,

but here was the problem. I didn't

know how to put it back together again, right?

So Aaron knew that I was attempting to fix the weed eater.

She came out like, two days later, I'm still out

there looking at the weed eater, and she says, what are we going to

do? And I said, we're going to Lowe's.

So they have a part. I was like, yeah, they have a part. They have

a whole brand new weed eater, right?

And that's what we're going to do. We're going to take this mess

that I've created and throw it away.

We're not going to talk about it. We're not going to tell your dad what I

tried to do. We're going to trash it, and

we're going to go buy me another weed

eater. And she looked at me with a smile on her face.

Yes, honey, let's go, let's go, let's go.

Right? That's kind of how we work sometimes. At least that's how

I work. That's probably not how a lot of you work, but that's how I work. We

take our mess sometimes and we just throw it away because we can

start over. And I think

what's interesting about the story of God

is God takes the mess that we've created,

the tragedy that sits at our feet.

And when we're found in Christ, who we are and what

God does, God says, watch what I

do as I take your mess

and I use it for my victory. I take

your mess and I use it

for my triumph. So

how does God do this? How does God

turn tragedy into triumph? Like what we see

here in Genesis

28, here's what we see. God will

reveal himself, you see,

turning your mass into the

victory of God is not about

you. It's not about me.

It's about him and who he is.

In John 14, we

see what everyone other than

Christ sees as

tragedy. The

crucifixion of Christ

is imminent. Those

around Christ know this.

And I want you to. I'm gonna read these words in John

14, four through nine, and I want you to look at

the impending tragedy of what's there, but what

begins to happen and take place. Jesus shares them. He

shares, I'm gonna leave. And he says, and

you know the way in verse four to where

I'm going. Thomas said to

him, lord, we do not

know where you are going. How can we know the

way? Jesus said to

him, I am the way and the

truth and the life. No one comes to the father

except through me. If you had known me,

you would have known my father also. From

now on, you do know him and have

seen him. Philip said to him, lord, show

us the Father, and it is enough for us.

And Jesus said to him, I have been with you so

long, and you still do not know me. Philip,

whoever has seen me has

seen the father. How can you say,

show us the father?

What Thomas and Philip see is

the mess. What Thomas and

Philip see is the

tragedy. But jesus

says, I'm, leaving. So Thomas was like,

hey, help us

know what we need to do

in order so we can do

for ourselves what needs to happen

so that we can be

where you are.

Philip says,

show us God.

And in both instances,

the will and the way

are, found in the person

of Christ. Jesus is

like,

you want to know where I'm going?

And stop trying to figure out what you need to do

and understand who I am.

Jesus says to Philip, you

want to know who God is? You

want me to show you who he is. Philip.

Philip, look at me. Look at

me. And in this moment,

Jesus is

revealing himself.

When tragedy, huh? Hits.

And I don't care if it's

self inflicted tragedy

or bystander tragedy,

whether you did it to yourself or whether someone else

did it to you.

Where. What.

Who do you run to?

When we had our miscarriage and the

battles and everything that we faced

for a couple years, Aaron and

I

went down a difficult road.

A difficult road spiritually in our walk with

the Lord, difficult

road in the health of our

marriage. And what we both

thought was that on.

On that day, in that miscarriage, there was a

void, and that a

baby. A baby would fill that

void. A baby would fill that

void. And I want to tell you a couple

things that. That's.

That's a tragic. That's

a tragic place to find yourself,

and it's a tragic conclusion to come to

for a couple reasons. Number

one, Emma and

Grayson and your children

and your spouse and everyone else

that you have in your life were

never intended or created to be void

filler in your heart.

But, Jesus is. Jesus

is. Only

Jesus can fill us.

Only Jesus can take what is broken

and make it whole. Only Jesus can take

every bit of suffering, every bit of tragedy, every bit

of pain, every bit of suffering that

you've endured in this cruel, cruel world that pours

it out over and over and over again and fill

that. So, in this

moment, how does God.

Back to, Genesis 28. How does

God reveal himself in this strategy? How

does God. In this tragic moment of what we see,

what does God do? How does God

show up? So let's read. We're gonna read

verse ten down through verse 22.

And so Jacob left

Beersheba and went toward

Haran. And he came to a certain

place and stayed there that night because the sun

had set. Taking one of the stones

of the place, he put it under his head and lay

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 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 in

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 and your offspring,

shall all the families of the earth be

blessed. Behold, I am with you and will

keep you wherever you go and will bring you

back to this land, for I will not leave you until

I have done all that I have promised

you. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and

said, surely the Lord is in this place, and I did

not know it. And he was afraid and

said, how awesome is this place? There

is none other than the house of God.

And this is the gate of heaven. So

early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had

put under his head and set it up for a

pillar and poured oil on top of

it. And he called the name of the place

Bethel, but the name of the city was

Luz at the first. Then

Jacob made a vow, saying, if God

will be with me and will keep me in this way that

I go. And will give me bread to eat and

clothing to wear. So that I come again to my father's

house in peace. And m the Lord shall be my

God. And this stone which I have

set up for a pillar shall be God's

house. And of all that I give and all

that you give me, I will give a full

10th to you. I think it's

interesting that when God speaks to Jacob

in the midst of all that has happened, in the midst of all that

has been there, in the midst of all that is going on,

he doesn't rebuke him, he, doesn't scold

him.

There's Christ. And this is who we believe

he's interacting with here,

reveals himself,

speaks to Jacob. He

reminds him of the promise and the

assurance, the promise and the

assurance of who God is

and what God has promised to

do. Just as God revealed himself to Abraham

in a vision, God revealed himself to Jacob in a dream.

And in this dream, God promises Jacob the three things

he promised Abraham. The gift of land, great

prosperity, and a blessing to all nations.

The goodness of God. The promises of God did

not fail in the tent where the lies were created. But

the promises of God continue on

as the God of promises turns the

tragedy into the triumph of who

he is.

In the days of Jacob, if someone left

their home as he

had, that person

also left their God behind. It's

time to find new. It's time to start over. It was time to

create for themselves what they would create.

But God promised Jacob

that he would remain ever present with Jacob, that he

would protect Jacob. And that one day

Jacob would return to his home.

And God made this promise, not out of Jacob's goodness, but

out of God's, in

Christ. Regardless of the mess

that we find ourselves in, regardless

of the situation where we find ourselves,

we can guarantee that God is with us,

that God is holding us, and that God has

a home for us. And

that I love within this

is that there's this moment that happens.

There's this moment that takes place

as the goodness of God

is revealed. And

sinful man, with his

failures and his shortcomings,

responds to that holy God.

It says that Jacob woke up

in fear that when God

had revealed himself

to Jacob, that

Jacob's response

was to respond in the

reverence, in the awe of God,

in the beauty, in the

majesty and a little bit

of the mystery of what always

there. He responded in

reverence to God. As

God revealed himself to

Jacob. He made a marker

which is not something that we do often,

especially in our context,

but we've definitely seen this in Genesis so

far, and we'll continue. So what is he doing? What is he doing with

this stone and this oil and a

pillar? He's setting a place

of worship, and he's worshiping

God. So in the revealing of

God, he is

reverently worshiping him.

And he makes a vow. He makes a

vow. He dedicates

himself to God. The

past is the past, and this

is who I am in you as I go

forward. And he pledged

to give a 10th of all that he

had. He made a

sacrifice. He presented an

offering.

M when we take all of

these things, in

Jacob's response to this

holy God,

in spite of his shortcomings and his failures,

in spite of his sin and all that he had created,

what did he do?

He had church. He

had church.

We come to worship

for a lot of different reasons.

But the beauty when we

come in the midst of our

tragedy, Lord, this is who we

are, and this is what we've created. And

I do not deserve anything but

the mess that is there and the wrath

that you have given, that you could give. But,

o Lord, in the reverence of

who you are and in your power and your

mercy, the reverence before a

holy God, the willingness to

come and not worship

ourselves, but to worship him

about who he is, about what he has done,

about his goodness, about his mercy, about his

grace. And we sing and we pray and we speak

and we profess all those things of who he is

that we come. And in the midst of this, we

recognize that I'm going to dedicate myself to you,

that this day moving forward, Lord, as more

and more of you is revealed to me, more and more as you extend

me your grace and your truth, or that these are the steps of

obedience that I'm committing you, that I'm gonna take on this day

forward, and the beauty of our

sacrifice, of our time,

of our talent, of our money,

of all of who we are,

all of these things, not because we're

good, not because we figured it

out, not because of what we made of

ourselves, but of

who he is.

Maybe today is a

difficult day for you. Today

is a day where you feel

the continual reminder of who you

are is surrounded by the

tragedy that you find yourself in.

Today is the day that we

worship a holy,

loving good

God who takes your

tragedy and turns it into

triumph, who turns it into

victory,

even death.

It's hard for us when

we attend a

funeral, when we have

someone close to us die.

It's a very difficult day.

It's a very difficult day, even if you're a follower of

Jesus, because you're

processing your feelings, your love,

your affection, of all that you have.

But in these, what we must remember, what

we cling to, is that every

bit of the sting of the pain of what

the world feels, is the finality of

death in

Christ. In Christ.

That service is not

about the tragedy. That

service is about the triumph

that's found in Christ

and in Christ alone. That he

takes all the tragedy,

all the impossible, all of the

finality of what the world sees

and says. I'm going to use it to make you

whole, to bring you into my

presence, and to take every

bit of suffering and remove it from you no

more.

That's the God we worship. Would you pray with

me?

Jesus, I thank you for today.

I thank you that, Lord. So many times

we find ourselves in moments

like this in scripture.

The situation changes,

the tragedy looks

different, but it's the

mess that, ah, we've

created.

It's the mess that the world

has laid out before us.

It's the tragedy of this life.

But, God, you take that.

You take all that's there,

all of what we find. You

say, I'm going to use this.

Use this for my name and

for my glory.

God, if we search

for victory

anywhere, in

anything or

anyone other than

Jesus, it

will fail.

It will end. It will come

to ruin. And so, God,

I pray that all of us

here, regardless of

where we find ourselves,

would take our eyes

off of the tragedy

and put it on the victor.

The one who brings triumphs,

the one who's all powerful,

the one whose word is ever true.

Jesus, you are the

way, the truth,

and the life. And it's

in your name we pray. Amen.

Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back

next week for another episode. In the meantime,

you can visit [email protected] or

by searching for Willow Ridge Church on Facebook,

Instagram and Twitter.