Can God work in a mess like this?

All right, good morning. Our scripture reading today is

going to be from Genesis 29 verses one through 30.

If you don't have a Bible with you, there should be a Bible

underneath the chair, and this scripture passage will be found

on page 21. So again, that's Genesis 29 one

through 30. Then Jacob went on his journey

and came to the land of the people of the east.

As he looked, he saw a well in the field and behold 3 flocks of

sheep laying beside it, for out of that well the flocks were

watered. The stone on the well's mouth

was large and when the all the flocks were gathered there, the

shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and

water the sheep and put the stone back in its place over the

mouth of the well. Jacob said to them, My brothers,

where do you come from? They said we are from Heron.

He said to them, do you know Laban the son of Nahor?

They said we know him. He said to them, is it well with

him? They said it is well and see

Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep.

He said, behold, it is still high day.

It is not time for the livestock to be gathered together, water

the sheep and go pasture them. But they said we cannot until

all the flocks are gathered together and the stone is rolled

from the mouth of the well, Then we water the sheep.

While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her

father's sheep, for she was a shepherdess.

Now as soon as Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his

mother's brother, and the the sheep of Laban his mother's

brother, Jacob came near this and rolled the stone from the

well's mouth and water the flock of Laban his mother's brother.

Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud.

And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's kinsman and

that he was Rebecca's son. And she ran and told her father.

As soon as Laban heard the news about Jacob his sister's son, he

ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him

to his house. Jacob told Laban all these

things, and Laban said to him, Surely you are my bone and my

flesh. And he stayed with him a month.

Then Laban said to Jacob, because you are my kinsman,

should you therefore serve me for nothing.

Tell me what shall your wages be now?

Laban had two daughters, the name of the older was Leah and

the name of the younger was Rachel.

Leah's eyes were weak but Rachel was beautiful in form and

appearance. Jacob loved Rachel and he said I

will serve you 7 years for your younger daughter Rachel.

Laban said it is better that I give her to you than that I

should give her to any other man, stay with me.

So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him

but a few days because of the love he had for her.

Then Jacob said to Laban, give me my wife that I may go into

her for my time is complete. So Laban gathered together all

the people of the place and made a feast.

But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to

Jacob, and he went into her. Laban gave his female servant

Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her servant.

And in the morning, behold, it was Leah.

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

Did I not serve you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?

Laban said, It is not so done in our country to give the younger

before the first born. Complete the week of this one,

and we will give you the other also in return for serving me

another seven years. Jacob did so and completed her

week. Then Laban gave him his daughter

Rachel to be his wife. Laban gave his female servant,

Bill Ha to his daughter Rachel to be her servant.

So Jacob went into Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than

Leah and served Laban for another seven years.

This is God's true word. What a text, am I right?

Good. Good morning, Port City family

and friends. My name is Will and I'm one of

the pastors here at Port City, and it is my honor anytime that

I get to open God's word with you all, no matter what the text

that I get to preach is. I love this church.

I love the people in it. I love that I get to know so

many of you so well. And for those of you that know

my family well, you know that my wife is incredible.

She's absolutely incredible. And many of you have probably

thought how in the world did we'll get Lauren and I don't

know, but God is gracious. But I want to share with you a

couple of my favorite things about my wife, OK?

She loves her friends incredibly well.

She sees people, she knows them, she remembers things about them.

She's one of the best people that I know that can do that.

But if I can just be honest with you, I want to share something

with you after 14 years of marriage.

If you want to make Lauren Thrasher, my wife, feel nervous,

go and ask her what I do for a living because she has no idea.

I promise you that. Case in point, some of y'all

think I'm about to get in trouble.

I promise to ask her how I could do this before I did it.

OK, case in .2 weeks ago, we're on the phone with a friend and

we're talking and I mentioned something about a risk that

they're taking. And she stands up with

confidence, bold confidence as she points at me.

And she says, and you need to listen to my husband because he

is in risk management. And I looked at her and I said,

babe, I haven't been in risk management in over 2 years.

I promise you, this woman who can remember the anniversary of

the time that your dog rolled over looking at your front door

still does not know what her husband does for a living.

We're working on it. We're going to get there at some

point, I promise. I share that story because the

text actually made me think back to my time in risk management,

which is saying something because it was two years ago.

One thing that we used to have to do when I was in that career

path was we would look at a process and we would think, OK,

what are all of the steps that are that are taking place in

this process? We'd break it down.

And then for each step, we would think, what is the worst thing

that could happen at this point in time?

What's the worst thing? We have to think of all the

scenarios. And then we would think about

how can we control for that thing, right?

What's the worst thing that could happen?

And that came to mind for me because when I read this

passage, I really thought if I were to give, if I were to read

the first 13 or 12 verses of this passage, and then I were to

give each of you a piece of paper and say, write down the

worst ending that you could think of for this, this

Scripture. I doubt, I hope honestly, that

none of you would have guessed that this is how this passage

would end, right? We wouldn't guess it because in

our wildest dreams, we couldn't imagine just the, the

brokenness, somebody doing something like this, this

situation, a father, right, bringing his daughters into this

situation. We, we just couldn't imagine it.

The, the chaos and the, and the mess that ensues here, right?

It's a hard passage for so many reasons.

There's just so much brokenness. And if I'm being honest, I've

wrestled with this one. I've wrestled with it.

God, what, what is it that you have for your people in this

text? Tanner, couldn't you give me a

couple more verses to get to the rest of the story, right?

Like, what do you have for us? And my hope this morning is I've

been just processing this and, and praying through this and

wrestling with this is that you would walk away with a greater

appreciation of how big the God that we serve is and how great

this story is that he's weaving together.

I hope that you're encouraged that there's no mess that is too

great for our God, including whatever mess you walk in here

with this morning. There's not a bigger mess that

he can't handle. My sermon this morning is called

Can God work in a mess like this?

This morning I have 3 themes that I think that we see in this

passage. Kids, I got you.

As always, you come to me at the end.

You write these three things down.

I got a piece of candy for you because I love you guys.

I love hearing you run up and down the hallways, even though

sometimes I tell you to stop. You guys are awesome.

I got you, Tejon. Love you guys.

All right, before I jump in though, I want to start off with

a word of prayer. Father God, I just come to you

this morning. Lord, you know just the anxiety

that comes with this passage. Lord, you know how difficult it

is. God, you understand the weight

of preaching your Word. Lord, I pray this morning that

you would fill me with Your Spirit, not for my glory, but

for yours. God, would you teach us what it

is that you have for us? Your Word tells us that all

Scripture is profitable. God, I know that through so much

time and history, so many things were left out, but you chose to

include this. God, You chose to include these

details, and so you have something for us in these

details. Father, would you just help us,

God to to understand what it is that you have for us this

morning? Lord, we love you and then we

pray. Amen.

I also want to warn you all because normally I have a timer

to tell me how long I've been going and I forgot to said it.

I apologize. We'll see what the Lord does.

Amen. All right, before we jump in the

first, the first theme that I want to address this morning,

kids, write this down. Chosen doesn't mean easy.

Somebody say chosen. Somebody say easy chosen doesn't

mean easy. All right.

Last week, Pastor Tanner preached out of Genesis 28,

where on his journey, not Pastor Tanner's, but Jacobs, he, he

came to find his uncle, right? He's on his way to find his

uncle. He just had this incredible

experience with God. He had a dream.

Pastor Tanner reminded us that this ladder was symbolic

throughout all of Scripture. And then it was a sign, not that

we had to ascend to God, but that God had a plan to descend

to us. That's pretty incredible, right?

What a beautiful picture of God's faithfulness that Jacob

has just experienced. Talk about a mountaintop

experience. There's angels, you know, on

this, on this thing. And he's, he sees, he's having

this conversation with God like the incredible.

Now we step into this story. If I had to break it into

scenes, I would break it into three scenes.

Not to be confused with the themes, kids, these are the

scenes, not the themes. OK, I'll tell you when I get to

the themes. These are the scenes.

All right, The first scene would be called love at First sight.

The second one is the agreement, and the last one is the

deception. Let's jump into love at first

sight. Kids, can you say love?

You guys are awesome. All right, as as we step into

this passage and we begin to read, everything just seems to

be working according to plan. Like it's crazy.

He has this mountaintop experience.

And then we just step into this and he's continuing on his

journey. And the text says as he looked,

he saw a well in a field. Notice that all of this language

is just kind of happening to him, right?

He's not producing it, he's not doing it, it's just happening.

This is God's provision and sovereignty in this moment.

And then it says, and behold, 3 flocks of sheep lie are lying

beside it, right? It's just this moment if he

notices something that's there. And Jacob looks at the shepherds

cause usually when they're sheep, they're shepherds.

And he says, my brothers, where do you come from?

Guess where these brothers were from, Haran where he was going

crazy, right? It's just lining up.

Everything is happening. Mountaintop experience.

One thing after the other is landing where you would hope

that it would go. This man goes to sleep one

night. He has this incredible dream

encounter with God. God makes promises to him and

says, you are my guy. You're the next one in line.

He wakes up. He goes on this journey and so

far everything is just falling into place.

He happens upon a well with some shepherds who just happened to

be from where he's going. And then he says, oh, that's

great. Any chance y'all know Laban?

That's my uncle. And they're like, yeah, we know

Laban too. It's crazy, crazy.

Guess what else? Not only did he show up at the

right place with the right people, but he showed up at the

right time. Because they say here comes that

man's daughter. Jacob looks up and here comes

Laban's daughter. And guess what?

She was beautiful. As soon as he sees her, somehow

he finds the strength to move this large stone like earlier in

the text. This text covers like 14 years

at least, right? And so when something, when

there's a detail in a text like that, it probably matters.

And earlier in the text, we find that the stone over this well is

large. So large, in fact, that all

those other shepherds are just chilling.

They're like, we're going to wait till everybody gets here to

help us do this thing, like we're not doing it ourselves.

And a beautiful woman comes, and he finds the strength to move

this by himself. Incredible.

After his show of strength, he tells her who he is.

He's like, you saw what I could do, now let me tell you who I

am. She responds with excitement and

she runs to tell her father all that's happened.

The scene ends there, right? First scene end.

We're thinking Hallmark movie. It might be summer, but it feels

like Christmas. You know, you've got a young man

who was a bad person. He's taking advantage of people,

he's made bad choices. He's on the run.

He's told to go to a town his family is from.

Sounds very familiar. On the way he has a life

changing moment. Now he has purpose and calling.

He's reminded of what matters. Meets a girl, she goes to tell

dad. Roll the credits.

That's a movie. But the story doesn't end there.

Kids, can you say next scene? All right, scene #2 the

arrangement. The story might be sounding a

little familiar at this point, and it honestly should sound

familiar. Jacob's grandfather's name was

Abraham. Maybe you heard of him?

Kind of a big deal in the Bible. When Abraham got old, he took

his servant and made him promise to find a wife for his son

Isaac. Spoiler alert, Isaac is Jacob's

daddy. Somebody say, Isaac, I'm going

to get you all these names straight.

I got to keep them straight for myself.

OK? His servant goes to where

Abraham told him to go, and he prays that God would make it

clear who the wife should be for Isaac.

God had blessed Abraham. And so this servant grabs camels

and all sorts of gifts from his master, and he goes to find a

wife for Isaac. Remember, Isaac equals Jacob's

dad. It's a lot of names.

He finds himself a well, it's not the same well, but it's a

very similar situation. And as he's praying God would

make it clear who the woman is that he's supposed to bring back

home, he sees Rebecca. Spoiler alert, ends up being

Jacob's mom. Long story short, he ends up

giving her a gold ring and bracelets and she invites him to

stay with her family. This is the scene when she

arrives at home. I'm going to read this OK.

This is in Genesis 24 verses 29 to 31 says Rebecca had a brother

Genesis 24:29–31

whose name was Laban. Sounds familiar.

Laban ran out toward the man to the spring as soon as he saw the

ring and the bracelets on his sister's arms and heard the

words of Rebecca his sister. Thus the man spoke to me.

He went to the man and behold, he was standing by the camel's

at the spring. He said, Come in, O blessed of

the Lord, why do you stand outside for?

I have prepared the house and a place for the camels after they

settled down and they eat food and they get down to business.

The servant says I am Abraham's servant.

Dude is loaded. He's blessed by God.

He's got flocks and herds and silver and gold and servants and

camels and donkeys, all kinds of stuff.

He said he has a son and I think God directed me that your sister

is the one who should be his wife.

Her brother. Laban and father say bet if

that's from the Lord, we can't stop it.

Take that girl to her husband. The next day he took her to her

husband. Now if we Fast forward to how

Laban responds when Rachel brings Jacob to meet him,

remember before Laban's the brother.

Now he's the father in the situation.

Genesis 2913 As soon as Laban heard the news about Jacob, his

sister's son, he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him

and brought him to the house. Jacob told Laban all of these

things. Do you notice the difference

between these two encounters? There's a slight difference.

The first encounter says as soon as he saw the ring and bracelets

on his sister's arms and heard the words of Rebecca, his

sister, this time there was no rings and there was no

bracelets. It was just words, right?

Unlike it, unlike his father, Isaac, Jacob didn't have

anything to offer. He was a runaway, if you

remember where he was coming from.

He didn't come with all of that stuff.

He didn't have anything that he could bring or offer for this.

And so Jacob hangs out there for a month.

And then Laban realizes that he has nothing to offer.

He says, OK, you can stay here and work, I guess what should

your wages be? And in verse 18, it tells us

Jacob loved Rachel and he said I will serve you 7 years for your

younger daughter Rachel. He was clear.

He said younger daughter Rachel, very clear, right?

It's going to be important later.

Now, seven years is a long time to wait for anybody.

Some of y'all still aren't seven years old, right?

It's a long time, no wait, especially when you are in love.

Jacob, who has been known to be a deceiver, he's been known to

be somebody who who takes what is not his.

He shows character in the situation.

He didn't try to have some sort of negotiation.

He didn't try to take advantage of Laban.

He offers a more than fair price in that day and age.

What do we see in verse 20? It says so.

Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seem to him but

a few days because of the love that he had for her.

We've jumped seven years between these two passages and even

seven years later we see the patience and love that he has

shown for Rachel. He didn't complain.

He waited patiently because he loved her so much.

The time flew by to him. She was a far greater reward

than the price that he had agreed to pay.

Jacob could have done something very differently though in this

situation. He could have walked into the

situation entitled. Where did he just come from?

He just had a dream. God said you are the next guy.

This is all the stuff that I'm going to do through you and for

you, I'm going to be with you. He could have, He could have

gone to Laban and said, Laban, let me tell you something, you

just hit the jackpot. I just had a dream and God

showed me a ladder. He told me that he's going to

bless me and make me great and give me countless children.

Let me marry your daughter. Like, congratulations, Laban.

I'm God's guy and I've chosen to be part of your family.

But Jacob didn't do that. That's not what he did.

I think that's important because I think that in our culture

today, I think where we live at, we can often think that if we

have to do a little work for something.

We're met with resistance in something, then God's not in it.

But I want you to know this morning that friction is not the

absence of the favor of God. Too often we think that if God's

leading us towards something, then it's going to be like we're

Super Mario. When he starts blinking.

You know what I'm talking about. Anybody that you know, Super

Nintendo, whatever, maybe you saw the movie recently.

He starts blinking and he stops jumping over stuff.

He just runs right through it. He's not dodging because he, he

is, he has the power, right? And so often times I think that

we think that if we have a promise from God or, or if God

has called us to do something, that's going to be it.

And the first time we hit some resistance or some friction, we

think maybe this wasn't from God.

Jacob had a promise from God, but that didn't mean that he

wasn't going to have to work either.

God's promise was a promise of how it would end up, not

necessarily what all the details would look like on the way.

And when God has given his word that he's going to accomplish

something, guess what? He's going to do it.

No matter how big the obstacle appears to be, God is going to

accomplish it. Now, Jacob, he wasn't afraid to

work. We saw that seven years, but I

guarantee you he wasn't ready for what was headed his way.

My next theme this morning, kids, this is number 2.

Chosen doesn't mean exempt. Dozen doesn't mean exempt we.

Talked about. Scene 1 and we talked about

Scene 2, but now we arrive at Scene 3.

The deception. Those seven years might have

felt like just a few days, but at the end of those few days,

Jacob was ready to get married. He went to Laban.

And said my time is complete, where my wife at, I'm ready.

It's been 7 years. That's the first sign of trouble

right there. There's probably some signs

before that, but the first real 1, he had to go to Laban.

We get the idea that if he had never gone to Laban, Laban

wasn't going to go to him. He was just going to let him

keep doing his thing. Might still be working today.

Verse 22 through 23. This is how Laban responds.

So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made

a feast. But in the evening he took his

daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went into her.

Wait a second, I thought we were talking about Rachel.

He just said, Leah, you all know those commercials where like 2

couples are fighting and they and they're like, hold on, what

did you say? And then they throw the flag and

then it does the replay thing. It's kind of like, hold up, what

just happened? We got to we got to go back to

the text again. He was very clear.

He said you're younger daughter Rachel.

But that's not what. Happened.

And as a reader we see this and we're like Jacob.

No, stop, don't do it. This man has worked seven years

to be tricked. And then we see in.

Verse 25 And it says, And in the morning, behold, it was Leah.

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

Did I not serve you for Rachel? Why then, have you deceived me?

He's, he's coming. With this kind of judgement tone

of like, how could you do this? Like, why would you do this?

Talk about shock. He immediately.

Wakes up to go and see Laban. I know what we agreed to.

Why? Why would you do this to me?

How could you do this to someone?

I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense.

We can start to feel. Sorry for the guy.

He showed such. Patience.

It felt like we were on the verge of this love story.

Everything was just lining up for that.

And then it's completely destroyed by this sick trick by

Rachel's father, her father. It's not fair to either of them.

But Laban. Laban wasn't stupid.

He knew at some point Jacob was going to figure it out.

He's like he might. There's some deception where

it's like they're never going to know what I did.

This one. He knew eventually he was going

to figure it out, right? And so he was ready for this

moment. He responded with just the thing

that would cut Jacob to the core and make him accept whatever

price he needed to. Verse 26, Laban said it's not

done so in our country to give the younger before the first

born. Now to anyone else, this might

just sound like a lame excuse. But to Jacob it was a statement.

Laban was saying I know who you are.

Don't try to judge me. I know exactly who you are.

You know who you are, too. Remember who Jacob is.

Remember how he got there. Remember how and why he was on

the run in the first place. He took advantage of his own

brother. He deceived his father as the

younger brother to take what belonged to his older brother.

He is guilty as well. He's also guilty.

Our series is called Saints and Scoundrels for a reason.

It's not because we're talking about Saints some week and we're

talking about scoundrels the other weeks.

It's because many times the Saints are also the scoundrels.

And up until this point in the text, we we can forget who Jacob

was the 1st 13 verses. He seemed like the biggest St.

everything. He's a he's this gentleman who

lifted the large stone for his love, the patient and hard

working romantic who worked seven years for the opportunity

to marry the love of his life. But this line is in here to

remind him, and to remind us that while the last 13 verses

made him sound saintly, his Rd. leading to this point had plenty

of scoundrel. Plenty of it.

Jacob's lack of response in this text says it all.

He didn't argue. He didn't push back.

Message received. He just agreed.

To work another seven years for Rachel.

I don't know if this is God's way of disciplining Jacob for

his previous deception, or if it's just natural consequences

of sin if he's he's reaping what he has sown.

But either way, just because Jacob was chosen does not mean

that he was exempt. We see here.

That just because God gives grace from the penalty of sin,

it doesn't always mean that we will escape the consequences of

it. The Bible tells.

Us that the Lord disciplines those whom He loves.

And sometimes, I don't know about all of you, but sometimes

when we're the ones being disciplined, we can feel like

it's not love. Maybe we can take it as a sign

of fury or frustration because some of us are parents and we're

broken parents and we know there's times when we don't

discipline out of a right motivation.

Or maybe you had parents that didn't discipline out of a right

motivation all the time. But I'm here to tell you that we

have a perfect father. He always.

Disciplines out of a righteous motivation.

There is no sin in him, only righteousness.

And so when He does discipline us, we can know that it's

righteous and it's good, even if it hurts.

But sometimes the consequences of sin are not as a result of

God's discipline. Sometimes we're just reaping

what we have sown. I know some of us in here have

had to face consequences of sin that maybe we committed prior to

following Christ. There's things that we've done,

decisions that we've made, or maybe even things that we've

committed as we followed Christ, as we've stumbled through this

life and and we still mess up and we still sin.

We're in Christ. And we know that we're his

children. We know who he sees when he sees

us. He doesn't see that sin anymore.

He's already paid for it on the cross.

But what's also true is that our hand is broken because we

punched the wall in anger. There's consequences, you know,

I'm also here to tell you that sin is not only sin because it's

what God said, it's also what God said because it's good and

true and best and. When we stray.

From what's good and true and best for us, there's

consequences. Regardless of whether Jacob was

being disciplined by God or if he was just dealing with

consequences of his own deception, there's a mess.

We have an absolute mess on our hands.

Before I go too. Much further, I want to call out

that I'm not going to address polygamy here.

Pastor John, I think, did an incredible job of that a couple

of weeks ago. All I'm going to say is that

polygamy, like many things we see in the lives of people

throughout Scripture, are things that are described, not

prescribed. Right, just like.

Deception is is laid out here. There are things in Scripture

that we see in God's people that are the evidence of the fact

that we have a messy people who need a savior, but it's not

necessarily God's way. Just because it happened doesn't

mean it's God's plan for his world.

And this story is a prime example for why that's not the

design for marriage. And frankly, any story that you

see that in Scripture is another prime example, because they all

turn out very similar to this. If we fast.

Forward to the end of the section.

Jacob has two wives that are sisters, one that he very

clearly loves and the other that he doesn't.

We can feel bad. For Leah, because she's the

unloved wife, but we can also understand why Jacob would

struggle to love her. Every time he looks at her he

just sees the deception both in his past role as the deceiver

and in his present role as the deceived.

The plan was to go and meet his uncle and get a wife in return

quickly, but now he has a debt of an additional 7 years to work

off. For Rachel, he's stuck with his

father-in-law, who's at he's at odds with and who just deceived

him. Not only that, but if we peek

ahead into the story a bit, if we look in a chapter 30 verse

one, it tells us that when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob

no children, she envied her sister.

She said to Jacob. Give me children or I shall die.

It's not looking too good. The whole thing is a mess.

It's painful for every single person involved.

Nobody wins. Think about Rachel.

She expected to get married all of these years and and is pulled

at the last minute to see this marriage go to her sister.

Then we find. Out that she's barren and

watches her sister have child after child after child.

Think about Leah. Who, whether or not she had a

say in this situation, finds herself in a marriage with a man

that she knows. All he wanted was her sister.

She was the tag. Along.

Her father had to trick. A man into marrying her.

And he woke up. On their wedding night with pure

disappointment on his face. At this point.

In the story it's hard to see how God is keeping his promises.

Verse 15, chapter 28 said, 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 what I've

promised you. It's hard to see how.

God is in that. Where's God out in all of this

mess? What's he doing?

Where's his presence seen? It seems like Laban.

Might have thrown a wrench in God's plan.

How could God work in a mess like this?

My last point this morning. Kids number. 3 The deceiver had

a plan, and so did God. Jacob's whole.

Life has been, and honestly will continue to have this theme of

deception. Jacob walks.

Through this. But it's not like he just learns

his lesson and he's good to go from here on out.

He took advantage. Of his brother's weakness, lack

of patience and hunger to take his birthright.

He deceived his father by taking on the appearance and smell of

his brother to take his brother's blessing.

Then his mother, in order to keep him safe from the anger of

his brother, manipulates his father Isaac to send him to

Haran and. Now that he's.

Here he's deceived by his uncle Laban.

And as we. Continue into Jacob's story.

It gets worse and worse and worse, and it doesn't stop with

him. His kids continue with the

rivalry. In fact, they end up selling

their own brother into slavery and tell Jacob that he was dead.

So how can a? Mess like this end up in God

fulfilling His promise for his offspring to bless all the

families of the earth. We look at Genesis. 2814 It

says, Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and

you shall spread abroad to the West, and the east, and the

north and the South, and in you your offspring shall be.

Shall all the families of the earth be blessed?

How in the world are they blessing anybody?

They don't even seem to like each other.

We can look back. And think, did God get the right

guy? Look at this.

Man, he's a mess. The truth is that.

The only reason Jacob is the right guy is because God

declared him to be the right guy.

He was a vessel. To bring God's plan to fruition

and there was nothing that he or anyone else was going to do to

stop God from getting the glory that he deserved.

Those children that we're talking about, his kids that are

also a mess. They end up being.

Pretty important in the Bible that son that was sold into

slavery by his brothers. His name is Joseph.

They ain't coat of many colors. Not the musical.

He was Rachel's first son. God takes him from being a slave

to prison to being second in charge of Egypt.

Talk about God. Being able to work something.

Now let's read the. Beginning of the lineage of

Jesus found in Matthew one. Just going to read.

Verse 2 says Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the

father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his

brothers. Judah.

Who was Jacob's son is named in the lineage of Jesus.

Jesus. Was from the lineage of this

crazy family, and more specifically from Leah, who was

the wife that Jacob didn't love. So ask me.

Again, how God can fulfill the promise found in Genesis 2814.

Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall

spread abroad to the West and the east, and the north and the

South, and in you and your offspring shall all the families

of the earth be blessed. Jesus came out of this mess.

Our Savior. I need you to know that this

story and this line of Jacob is not the only messy story in the

Old Testament. Just read through the rest of

the names listed in the genealogy of Jesus in their

stories. It doesn't get better.

They're all messy stories. The whole Bible is a is a book

of messy stories. So many times we think the Bible

is a book of people who who live these clean and perfect lives

and we need to be more like David and we need to be more

like Jacob. That's not the Bible.

That's. Not it we get creation and then

we get the rest. It's just us messing it up but

God finding a way to make this messy people clean and alive

again. In fact, he.

Used a messy family to bring the one who would come and live in

that mess but remain clean. Jesus was God with us.

He came into the world as a baby, grew up, faced temptation,

lived among sinners, lived and worked with frustrating, messy

people. Do you all know any of them?

Yet he never. Sinned.

He never once messed up Out of this mess God brought the one

who would ultimately clean up our mess, not by sweeping it

under the rug, but by becoming a mess on the cross and paying the

penalty for it. The only one.

Whoever who never sinned and never messed up took the penalty

for the rest of us who have clearly messed up.

Now everyone wants to be shown grace until they're the one

that's offended. They want a gracious judge until

they're sitting in the other seat.

If. Someone hurts.

Someone that you care about. You don't want grace anymore,

you want justice. We all desire a righteous judge,

but in God we get a righteous judge who demands payment and a

gracious judge who makes that payment on our behalf.

Maybe there's some of you in here this morning who don't know

Jesus. Maybe you know that that you are

a mess and that you are tired of trying to clean it up, trying to

be good enough, trying to fix everything.

I'm here to tell you this morning that Jesus isn't asking

you to clean yourself up. He's asking you to put your

trust in Him, the only one who can save you from your sins, and

let Him do that work in you to. Those of us who.

Already followed Jesus, I want you to remember that just

because life feels like a mess right now, maybe you look around

and you say, God, where are you at?

Where are you? At things are a mess.

My kids are a mess. My my family's a mess.

My work is a mess. I'm just here to tell you that

that just because it feels like a mess right now doesn't mean

God is not present. He's been working in mess ever

since the beginning. Don't lose heart.

He's there. Let's pray, Father, I just come

to you. Oh Lord is is a mess.

Speaking about Mess guy, God I pray this morning.

That you would just get. This word in US, Lord, that you

would, would show us through our mess, Lord, how great of a

savior you are. God, I pray.

That you would work in us this morning, God, I pray that your

word would, would just show us who we are as a mirror God, and

show us who you are and the price that you paid for us.

For those of us in here this morning, God, who don't know

you, Lord, would you call them to salvation this morning?

Lord? Would they trust you with all of

the mess that is their life when they follow you from here on

out? Knowing that one.

Day, God, You are going to make it all right.

Lord, we love you. Your name we pray.

Amen.