Genesis: Breakthrough

New Year.

I have been doing a lot of praying and reflecting

over the last month in preparation of this morning. The

end of twenty twenty four, honestly was it was pretty

fun to be the pastor of this church. We very

not spontaneously. It was planned, but we would have seemed

spontaneous to you. We brought up this fundraising generosity campaign

called Next Chapter to vault us into the next season

of our church. We set out this very lofty, borderline

impossible goal by the end of the year, and in

a two month period of time, our church raised in

cash in addition to tithe, over one point one million dollars.

This pretty awesome.

So going into this I was I'm really encouraged as

I stand here this morning to preach. But I want

to tell you the part that was the most moving

to me. It was I encouraged you, what did you

want to see a miracle in your life that, as

you're feeding, ask God for a miracle and people would

come and they would present their hopeful breakthrough, their hopeful

miracle at the altar. And over the next last couple

of weeks, the staff we've all read through those and

I would say they were real like you were honest.

It was one person after another believing for legitimate breakthrough

miracles in their lives. There's some that were saying, I

want my kids to find Jesus. There's some that are saying,

I want my spouse to find Jesus. There's some of

you that are believing that this is the year you

find a spouse that there are others asking for a

physical miracle, a financial miracle. A couple of the cool

ones that I like were people saying this is the

year I want to own a home for the first time.

And others are asking that God would restore friendships. Some

were asking that God would restore family relationships that are broken.

And there was one person after another that was really

believing and asking God for a spiritual breakthrough in their life.

Many were asking for a mental breakthrough, emotional breakthrough. And

as I was reflecting on those, reflecting on the year,

reflecting and looking ahead to twenty twenty five, the word

the Lord kept laying on my heart over and over again.

Is this word breakthrough. Now.

I know it's really cliche today for everybody to come

up with a word for the year. I don't know

when that started I'm blaming COVID for it. But that's

like a thing today that everybody comes up with a word.

I kind of in a mocking way on my social

media said, my word for twenty twenty five is cake.

Now, in all seriousness.

Our theme for twenty twenty five as a church is

we are believing for breakthrough, like we want to see

breakthrough in your life. We want this to be the

year you see the spiritual miracle. We want this to

be the year you see that person you've been praying

for find faith in Jesus. We want this to be

a year where you have your financial breakthrough, where you

experience that breakthrough. Here's what the word breakthrough means. Tell

me if you are not claiming this definition over your life.

Breakthrough means a sudden, dramatic development in a positive way.

How many of you want that? I don't know about you,

but I want that over a church. I want that

over my family. I want that over myself. I want

that over my health, a sudden dramatic development. Another definition

of breakthrough is it is an important discovery or event

that helps to improve a situation or provide an answer

to a difficult problem. A sudden dramatic development. Twenty twenty

five for Venture is our year of breakthrough. The verse

that we are going to reflect on I'm going to

challenge you to memorize it this year is Isaiah sixteen

through nineteen, which describes breakthrough. I want to highlight specifically

verse eighteen. One of the things that I've challenged you

with is we spent a lot of twenty twenty four

reflecting on the past, which is good. We want to

thank Jesus for twenty years of what he's done at Venture,

and it has been amazing. But I challenged you with,

let's not be that church that always talks about our past.

Let's not be that church that looks back at.

Our past as our best years, our fondest years.

But let's be.

Thankful for our past, see it for what it is,

which was simply the foundation that God has been laying.

And if this is the.

Foundation, He's now going to start building the house. So

we want to not dwell on the past, but look

ahead to what God has and that's what this verse

talks about. It says this, forget the former things, do

not dwell on the past, because I'm doing a new thing.

And that's what we're believing for this year. I'm believing

that this is gonna be the year of breakthrough for

you physically, relationally, financially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually breakthrough.

Now back to the book of Genesis. All right, grab

your bible.

I want you to turn Genesis chapter twenty five. I'm

gonna read two verses. Then we're gonna pray together. Verse nineteen,

it says Abraham became the father of Isaac, and Isaac

was forty years old when he married Rebecca, daughter of Bethiel,

the Aramian from Padam aram and the sister of Laban.

I want to ask everyone to buy your heads, close

your eyes.

I want you to repeat this prayer after me.

Everyone say, Dear Jesus, speak to my heart, change my

life in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, where do we leave off in the story

of Genesis. By the way, we will finish Genesis before Easter.

So now we shift into Genesis mode. Read ahead, be prepared.

We're cranking through Genesis. Where do we leave off. Well,

we know Abraham has this encounter with God. It changes him,

and God says, I want you to leave everything that

is familiar, everything that is known, and I want you

to go to this place that you've never been, and

I want you to trust me. But Abraham, if you

do that, if you are obedient, I will make you

a great nation. So Abraham reluctantly obeys, and he goes,

holding on to this promise from God that God is

gonna make him a great nation. But reality begins to

set in for Abraham. His wife Sarah struggled with infertility.

She was barren, and they waited twenty five years, holding

on to this promise from God that he'd make them

a great nation, and they finally had a son, Isaac. Now,

when Isaac is thirty years old, God speaks to Abraham

again about his son. He says, I want you to

take your son Isaac with you to Mount Mariah, and

I want you to sacrifice him there for me.

Well, if you're Abraham, this makes no sense.

You finally, after twenty five years, have a son.

He's now thirty.

God has promised you that he's gonna make you a

great nation. That is obviously through your son to Isaac,

and now he's asking you to sacrifice Isaac on an altar.

This makes no sense to Abraham, but he presses forward.

There's so many times in your life you will realize

God is going to ask you to do something that

doesn't make sense. So he takes him up on Mount

Mariah ties him up. It's called the Binding of Isaac.

I preached on this several weeks ago, and just about

as Abraham is going to follow through with this, the

Lord stops him and says, this is only a test,

and we know that God was testing Abraham his faithfulness,

and God spares Isaac. Fast forward to chapter twenty four.

Abraham is now old. Abraham is to the point where

this life is about to pass before him and his son, Isaac,

who's now forty so it's about ten years after the

Binding of Isaac is still single. So if you're Abraham,

this doesn't make any sense. How can God make you

a great nation when your son is a perpetual bachelor.

So Abraham sends one of his servants to his homeland

in hope to find Isaac a wife there. So this

servant goes and he sees Rebecca drawing water from a well,

and he thinks that woman is very beautiful. He inquires

about her, finds out that she's single, she's a virgin.

He approaches her family says, can I take her with

me back to Abraham to meet Isaac, see if there's

this love connection, And the family says, we're okay.

With it, but it's up to Rebecca.

So the servant goes to Rebecca says, would you come

with me to meet Isaac to the home of Abraham,

And Rebecca.

Says, let's go.

So she travels back to Abraham and Isaac and their family,

and Isaac and Rebecca see each other for the very

first time, and it is what you would say. I mean,

it's full on love at first sight. They fall in

love see each other leads us chapter twenty four, verse

sixty seven, which says Isaac brought Rebecca into the tent

of his mother, Sarah. He married Rebecca, so she became

his wife, and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted

after his mother's death.

So Isaac and Rebecca get hitched.

Twenty years later, they still cannot have a child, just

like his mother was. Now his his wife is also

struggling with infertility and she is barren.

Have you realized.

God's timing is not your timing? If you learn anything

from Genesis, God could care less about your timing. There's

a famous saying that was coined in thirteen sixty by

an English poet, William Langlan. Now you're going to find

out who you should dislike quickly. He coined this famous phrase,

Patience is a virtue. Anybody heard that one before, anyone

had that one quoted to them, before anyone quoted that

to someone before. I think we all agree that we

have been haunted by that phrase for see hundred years.

Patience is a virtue. Well, God is very unconcerned with

your timing. He waits until the perfect moment, and then

he sends a breakthrough. David, when he coined the Psalm

thirty one, he understood this when he said, my times

are in your hand. The thing that I love is

how Isaac responded to twenty years of barrenness. Now Isaac

knew the promises that his father had been given to.

You can imagine the amount of weight that this must

have been on Isaac. And so here's what he does.

Verse twenty one of chapter twenty five. It says Isaac

prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because

she was childless.

I love that.

That is his response. What is he sees his wife

in turmoil. He sees his wife struggling. So the response

of this husband is he prays for his wife. If

that was the whole sermon, that's worth it, because that

in itself is incredibly powerful. He sees that his wife

is barren and struggling, and he prays for her. Church,

if you're believing for a breakthrough for you, for your kids,

for your family, your finances, whatever it may be, it

begins by you praying.

You begin that process.

When you brought that request forward, you would say, peep,

how is that the beginning of my breakthrough? Because it

takes courage first off, to write something down.

It then takes even.

More courage to turn it in where you know, even

though your name's not on it, you know someone else

is going to read it. But the next step for

you is to go to things like tonight. Tonight, we

schedule this very strategically, first Sunday night.

Of this new year.

We are gonna have an opportunity for you and I

to pray for breakthrough. This is our moment where we

are going to pray, believe God for the things that

we wrote on those cards and things we didn't even

have the courage to write we are going to pray

for breakthrough. As those breakthroughs come throughout this year, we

will come back to that moment where we gathered together

as a church and said, Jesus, we are praying for breakthrough.

Jesus said himself. He said, if you believe, you will

receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Understand that faith

and belief that these two things work together. And faith

and belief need to precede your prayer. And I will

promise you that prayer will precede your breakthrough. So if

you want to see a breakthrough, you need to pray

about it.

Don't complain to me.

If you don't see a breakthrough and you don't pray

about it. Don't complain to me if you don't see

a breakthrough and you don't come tonight so that we.

Can pray with you. So he prayed for his wife,

and what happened.

The Lord answered the prayer and his wife, Rebecca, became pregnant. Okay,

listen to this, says, The babies jostled each other within her.

Did you notice something said babies didn't say, baby, says

jostled within her. That word jostled in the Hebrew to

crush to oppress. It was obvious to everyone who was

witnessing this pregnancy that it wasn't a normal pregnancy.

And then this is what happens. When the time came

for her to give birth, there were twins in her womb.

Do you remember I'm dating myself, but remember the old commercials,

back like in the early eighties, and people would say,

we looked at our budget, and we realized we had

room for one more, and so they went they got pregnant,

and then they said, and this is what happened, and

then they hold her twins. We had room for one more,

and we had two.

She has twins.

We know that one in about two hundred and fifty

pregnancies is twins. But these weren't identical twins. These were

fraternal twins, which means they're not identical. They don't look alike,

they're different. Two thirds of twins actually end up being

fraternal twins, but only twenty five percent of all twins

are fraternal twin boys. So she add fraternal twin boys.

I understand Di understands what it's like to have fraternal

twin boys because we have fraternal twin boys. Interesting thing

about fraternal twins is that oftentimes.

They don't look alike.

In fact, if you were to see both my sons

right now, Judah and Elijah, you would wonder if they're related, Like,

they do not look alike at all. And the other

crazy things is, oftentimes, like with fraternal twins, is their

personalities and interests are radically different too. The other thing

about Judah in Elijah is they have nothing in common

other than we're their parents. They like different things, they're

into different things now.

They grew up.

They were great brothers together and things, but they are

about as radically different as two people could be.

I relate to Isaac and Rebecca.

So Isaac and Rebecca have these twin boys, and the

Bible does an amazing job describing them.

You ready, when the time.

Came for her to give birth, there were two boys

in her womb.

The first to come out was red, and his whole

body was like a hairy garment.

Congratulations, you had a bigfoot, So the Bible says, they

named him Esau, which means Harry.

He was a ginger red hair all over his body.

Then it says verse twenty six, after this came his

brother with his hand gras being Esau's heel, so they

named him Jacob.

The name Jacob means.

May God protect, but it comes from the Hebrew root word,

which means grasping his heel.

Or he deceives.

These become almost like Jacob's nicknames, because grasping his heel

or he deceived becomes a major part of Jacob's personality

as he grows up.

The Bible fast forwards us.

Through their teen young adult years by describing what they're into.

It says once, It says, excuse me, verse twenty seven.

I like am fully fighting, having to wear glasses when

I read my Bible. Up here, Probably by twenty twenty six,

I'm gonna have to give in. But I frequently pause

and get lost because I can't read where I'm at,

and I don't think they make big enough print bibles

to cover this anymore.

The boys grew up, an Esau.

Becomes the skillful hunter, a man of the open country.

Esau grows up, becomes an outdoorsman, hunting, fishing, long Beard,

rides horses, smokes.

Cigars, drinks bourbon. Etho is a cowboy.

Then it tells us about Jacob, says Jacob was content

to stay at home among the tents. I said this

in the first service, did not get corrected by my gen.

Z staff, so I'll say it again.

They heckled me, but they didn't correct me in my

office afterwards. Jacob grows up. He becomes a home body.

Jacob is a metrosexual.

He liked to cook.

He was very cleanly shaven, very worried about his appearance.

He was very well groomed, very much into fashion.

And what we learn about later on is that.

Isaac loved Esau and Rebecca loved Jacob. I know you're

not supposed to have favorites, but Isaac and Rebecca did.

We're talking about breakthrough today. Here's what I want you

to learn from these two boys. Two things. I'm gonna

tell you up front what they are.

These two things are what you have to work your

way through if you really want to see a breakthrough.

The first one is this, you must destroy an undisciplined appetite.

Tonight we're gonna pray for you to have a breakthrough,

but all year long you are gonna be wrestling with

Jesus about your undisciplined appetite.

Second thing is you need to deal with your past.

It's a great.

Famous saying that says, if you don't deal with history,

history is doomed.

To repeat itself.

Now we know that happens in our world, but it

also happens in an individual's life. You need to destroy

an undisciplined appetite, and you, on all likelihood need to deal.

With your past.

The crazy thing is today, I'm gonna set you up

for next week. I'm also gonna set you up for tonight.

This is your setup for your breakthrough. It's a great

saying that I heard years ago, and it talks about

sometimes times your setback is a setup for a really

good comeback. That's what twenty twenty five is for many

of you. Twenty twenty four, you had a setback, but

it was only a setup for your comeback. It's gonna

be your breakthrough, but it's gonna come once you deal

with an undisciplined appetite, once.

You deal with your past. There are really two.

Things that are at work in Jacob and Esau's life,

and they don't mean much to you and I today

in twenty twenty five, you know America, But to a

Hebrew thousands of years ago, these two things were about

the most significant things that your family had, and they

are your birthright and your blessing.

Let me explain both of them. What is a birthright?

The birthright and the Hebrew culture was the right of

the first born.

It meant that you inherited.

A greater portion of your father's wealth of everything he owned,

his land, his possessions. It's known as a double portion.

In other words, you were given twice what any of

the other siblings were given, simply because of your birth order.

In this story, because Esau came out one second before Jacob,

his wealth was going to be double what his brothers was.

Now, remember this, Abraham had arguably.

Grown into developed into the wealthiest person in the world.

Abraham passes away hands all of that wealth to his

son Isaac, who is now about to hand all of

that wealth that he has subsequently grown to his two sons,

Jacob and Esau. But Esau is going to get twice

what Jacob will get. That is the birthright with me. Then,

in addition is the blessing, And to some this is

even more important. This is where the father would come

at the end of his life and he would lay

hands on each one of his kids and he would

speak a prophetic prayer or blessing over them. It was

believed in this culture that that blessing drew supernatural power

from the father's sincerity, so as he was speaking prophetically

over his kids, that God would supernaturally fulfill this blessing. So,

whether or not you agree with that or not like

that idea or not, in this time, if your father

prayed this blessing over you, you believed it it was

absolutely going to happen to you. You coveted a favorable

prayer of blessing from your father over you. And if

you are the son or daughter that is loved the

most by your father, you're gonna receive the greatest blessing

from your father. So growing up, Esau lived his life

assuming these would be his right, these would be given

to him. Have you ever heard the phrase you shouldn't

assume something because what assuming does to you. It's almost

like Esau took it for granted. Jacob, on the other hand,

coveted these even though they were rightfully not his. He

wanted desperately what was rightly by birth order his brothers.

So his whole life was plotting and scheming and waiting

for the right moment and when the time came, Jacob,

whose name means deceiver, would trick his brother Church. Remember,

destroy an undisciplined appetite and deal with your past. So,

as the story goes verse twenty nine, Once when Jacob

was home cooking stew.

You just get the setting of these kids right here.

Now they're adults, it says thea came in from the

open country famished.

It was a hard day's work.

It's out hunting, fishing, doing the cowboy thing.

Forgot to eat.

How many of you have boys sons that are playing

so rowdy outside when they come in, it's like they

forgot to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then they

run into the house. And if they don't eat food now,

they think they're going to die. You relate to Esau.

Esau came in from the open country famished. He said

to Jacob, quick.

Let me have some of that red stew. I'm famished.

Jacob replies, first, sell me your birthright, Esau, proving you

as a very undisciplined appetite. Look, I'm about to die.

If you ever heard that from your kids. If I

don't eat now, I'm going to die. What good is

my birthright? To me, but Jacob said, swear to me first.

So Esau swore an oath to him, selling his birthright

to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau some bread, some lentil stew.

Esau ate and drank.

Then he got up and he left. And it says

from that day forward Esau despised his birthright.

That word despised.

It means he didn't hold it with the value that

it was due. It means Esau didn't care about it.

He didn't protect it, so he lost it. Destroy an

undisciplined appetite. Here's the reality, Church, The devil is not stupid.

If you have a price, he'll find it and he'll

pay it. If you have a.

Price, you need to destroy it. Destroy an undisciplined appetite,

and you gotta deal with your past. Chapter twenty seven,

verse one, when Isaac was old. So now dad is

about to die, and what comes. It's time to pray

the blessing over my son, and Esau's his favorite. His

eyes were so weak that he could no longer see.

He called Esau his older son, and he said to him,

my son, here I am.

Esau answered, I.

Am now old and don't know the day of my death,

I want you to go get your equipment, your quiver

and bow, and go out to the open country and

hunt some wild game for me. Prepare me the kind

of tasty food I like, and bring it to me

to eat, so that I may give you my blessing

before I die.

Finally, Esau is.

Gonna receive this cherished blessing from his father. So he

grabs his bow and arrow and he heads out to

the open country to hunt, to kill a deer to

make this venison stew that.

His dad loves.

So while Esau is none the wiser out doing what

Esau does, ignoring kind of what is happening in the

circumstances around him, we read this. But Rebecca, mom, who

loves Jacob, was listening.

She says, all right, that moment has come.

She grabs Jacob and she says, you know how we

have been planning for that right moment where you could

receive your father's blessing instead of Esau. That time has come.

Esau is out hunting. He's gonna make some stew for

your father before he gets back. You're gonna present.

Stew to him.

Well, Jacob's response is like this, He's like, Mom, I'm

totally in. But the problem is Esau smells like a

locker room and I have tom Ford colognon. And he said,

in addition to that, Esau is Harry, and I shaved

my arms and legs. There's no way I'm gonna be

able to fool that. And she says, I'm gonna make

the stew for you, and she puts on She has

him put on goat's skin on his arms and.

Wear Esau's clothes. So, as the.

Story goes, she hands the stew to Jacob. He goes

into his father and says, father, I'm here. Isaac is

surprised because it didn't take very long for him.

To hunt and cook.

And immediately, Isaac is suspicious because the voice. Even though

his eyesight is bad, his hearing is strong, his smell

is strong, and his touch is strong. And this does

not sound like Esau. So he's suspicious. So he says,

come near to me. So as Jacob Zub comes near

with the stew, Isaac reaches out his hand and he

touches his arm and he feels the goat skin and

he says, this this is we're told what he's thinking.

Hmm.

Sounds like Jacob but feels like Esau. I don't know

about you, but when I read that, I was like, how.

Harry was Esau?

And then he smells and he smells Esau's clothes, And

the whole time Dad is thinking it sounds like Jacob,

but it smells and feels like Esau. So he eats

the stew and he lays hands on Jacob, thinking it's Esau,

and he prays a blessing over him. Then verse thirty,

after Isaac had finished blessing him, Jacob, thinking it was Esau,

and Jacob had scarcely left his father's presence, his brother

Esau comes in from hunting. He too, prepared some tasty

food and brought it to his father.

Then he said to him, my.

Father, please sit and eat some of my games, so

that you may give me your blessing. Isaac trembled violently

and said, who is it then.

That hunted game and brought it in to me. I

ate it before you came, and I blessed him, and

indeed he will be blessed.

I had somebody asked me after the first service. They're like, well,

because the blessing was given, because Isaac was deceived. I mean,

can't he just turn around and pray the same blessing

over Esau? And how the blessing that he prayed over

Isaac not count?

Why can't he do that?

That is a phenomenal question that I have no answer to.

He believed that once he prayed that that was gonna happen.

In that prayer, when he said amen or I'm done,

that became binding over that son.

That is what they believed in that culture. So Etha.

In that moment he makes this statement, and he says,

isn't he rightly named Jacob? This is the second time

he has taken advantage of me. Not only do you

need to destroy an undisciplined appetite, but you must deal

with your past. If you try to ignore your past,

it will come back to haunt you if you do

not deal with your struggles in your past, if you're

not honest about your past, if you try to deny

your past, it could become your present.

Again.

He took my birthright, and now he's taken my blessing.

Haven't you reserved anything for me? Isaac answers Esaw by saying,

I have made him lord over you and have made

him and all of his relatives and his servants. I

have sustained him with grain and new wine. So what

can I possibly do for you, my son? He basically says,

I spoke that blessing. It was binding, and it is

his now, regardless of how he deceptively received it.

Story here takes a pause with this.

Verse forty one, very proud, powerful verse says Esau held

a grudge against Jacob. He said to himself, the days

of morning from my father are near, then I will

kill my brother Jacob. Well, Rebecca hears about her son,

Esaus plans, grabs Jacob, says Jacob, you need to run away,

and sends him away to her brother Laban's home. By

the way, does this not seem like an episode of Yellowstone?

That's where we're gonna pause. I'm gonna pray for you.

In just a moment, Die's gonna come up and close

the service. I know it's abrupt, but I want you

to sit in the unsteadiness of destroying, an undisciplined appetite

of dealing with your past. Tonight we want to pray

for you about those things.

So this is.

Your setup to come to the worship night tonight as

your breakthrough in twenty twenty five begins, let me pray

for you, Lord Jesus, I thank you for your word that,

even in a historical narrative portion of scripture, even in

a story that seems outlandish and it seems like something

that is scripted by Hollywood, Lord, we receive insight from

your word. And God, I pray for everyone in our church,

those listening right now online, that you would challenge them

what area of my life is undisciplined that I need

to destroy and what things from my past do I

need to deal with so that I can have a breakthrough. Lord,

speak to them, challenge them, inspire them to come tonight

in Jesus name.

Amen,