Jacob

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, good morning, Awakening Church.

Great to be with you.

My name's Ryan.

We're absolutely thrilled that you would join us today.

Alright, man, you guys really got into the whole uh greeting time.

Well done.

Um hey, well, here I just want to show you something that happened uh this week.

Uh this happened on Friday.

Yeah, now if you now if you don't know that person in the middle, that is Wardell Stephan Curry.

The greatest, did you say oh?

Like the greatest point guard who has ever graced this planet.

Absolutely.

Amen by myself.

Now let me give you the backstory uh of how this moment happened.

Uh the two young men next to Wardell, Steph and Curry, on the left is my son Miles in the gold jersey, and on the right is Ryder.

Miles friend Jacob um posted on his story that Steph was doing a promotional for his new sports energy drink, Plessy.

This is not a commercial, but I heard it was good.

Uh Plessy, and he's doing it in San Jose.

He's gonna do an appearance at a Safeway and a Costco.

Safeway is at 9 a.m.

Costco is at 11 a.m.

Uh his friend Jacob gets up at 4 a.m.

to go to Safeway, to stand in line.

You gotta get a Plessy, and then you get a picture with the great.

Yeah, Miles' alarm, I think, didn't go off right right at the time he had hoped.

Uh he and Jenny get to Safeway at 8, and the line has wrapped well around the building.

It's massive.

Jacob says, hey, not everybody's guaranteed to get a picture.

You should probably go to Costco.

Jenny, Miles, then eventually Ryder gets in line, and they're in waiting in line in Costco.

And then that happened.

I asked my boys, like, what was it like meeting Steph, you know?

And one of them said, he's majestic.

And I probably would say the exact same thing.

Now, what I I didn't expect, Jenny was telling me about the experience and people in Costco, as you can imagine, there's this buzz around, everybody's Steph's here, Steph's here, Steph's here, right?

There's this buzz.

And the thing they were all talking about, Steph, he's so beautiful.

I didn't expect it.

I didn't know that.

His eyes, dreamy green eyes.

In fact, one of my voice said it's as if he was AI generated.

That's how good-looking he was.

Now, none of this moment would have happened if it wasn't for Jacob.

Jacob, who posted, that's how Miles knew, and then gave him the inside intel to not wait in line at Safeway to go to Costco.

And I do have to tell you the end of the story, unfortunately, for Jacob, he got to the front of the line and they shut it down.

I know.

So sad.

And I'm so glad for our boys, but I'm so sad for you know Jacob.

Not sad enough that I wouldn't show you this picture, but John Oberg writes this in the life you always wanted.

We tend, we all tend to live in the direction of the voices we believe the most.

Let me ask.

Whose voice do you believe the most?

Maybe said another way.

What's the loudest voice in your life?

I think for many of us, sometimes the loudest voice in our life may be shame.

Loudest voice, so it can violate, might be this drive to be better, to do better.

Or that you have to be perfect to be acceptable.

Maybe the loudest voice is your damaged good.

If people really knew you, they wouldn't like you.

God couldn't love you.

Why try?

Why show up?

It's the voice that keeps whispering.

Never let your guard down.

We all tend to live in the direction of the voices we believe the most.

How do you break free from the voices that are holding you back?

The voices that are on repeat and directing the course of your life.

We're in a series called The Dysfunctional Family of God.

In it, we've been journeying through the very first book of the Bible called Genesis.

It's the origins of God's redemptive story for all of humanity.

And the thing about the Bible, and I love this, is that it's incredibly honest.

The heroes of the faith are really messy, really broken and dysfunctional.

And the invitation for us is to actually see God's redemptive thread, God at work in the midst of humanity's messiness and brokenness, which means God is at work in the midst of our messiness and brokenness.

And at the same time, as we read, identify dysfunctional patterns, generational sins, that God wants to bring healing and wholeness for our lives.

Today we come to the story, the life of Jacob, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

Jacob, God chose one family from all the nations, from that family would bless every other family and nation.

The title today is Your Name Matters.

Would you go ahead and say that to your neighbor?

Your name matters.

Who's the voice that you believe the most?

How do you break free from the voices that are holding you back?

We pick up the story of Jacob in Genesis 25.

His early life, we could rightly say, simply sum up in this sentence, living out his name.

His parents, Isaac and Rebekah, they struggled with infertility, which actually is a theme throughout Genesis.

That this promised family who would be a blessing to all families, yet every single generation struggled with the deep pain of infertility.

Isaac prayed, God answered their prayers, and Rebecca gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob.

Now, Jacob was the secondborn, and I have twin older brothers, and you might think because they're twins, it doesn't matter the birth order, and I gotta tell you, one minute makes a big difference, and a lot of arguments in our home about who was oldest.

Now, Jacob was the secondborn, Esau was the firstborn, and the text tells us so Esau's born, and then Jacob is born, and he's grasping the hill of Jacob.

Now, in the ancient day, they would name them after character qualities and traits and just who they are.

So Esau came out, he was really hairy, ready, uh, or reddish looking, and so they named him Esau, which just means hairy.

Uh, and then they named Jacob this way, and Jacob's grasping the hill of his brother on the way out, and so they named him, yeah, hill grabber.

Like, aren't you glad we don't name kids that way anymore?

Hill grabber.

But unfortunately, as well, hill grabber uh is an idiom which means deceiver, manipulator, trickster, and he was living out his name, deceiver.

Now that he was raised in a divided home, and we get to see the dysfunctional family stuff here.

Jacob really preferred and favored Esau.

Esau was an outdoorsman, he was a hunter, uh, and you know, he Jacob really resonated, uh, or Isaac really resonated with Esau.

Now, Jacob, they also say his skin was smooth.

It just tells us that.

I don't really know why.

Do with that what you want.

Um, but he was a homebody.

He loved to be home, and Rebekah favored him, and we see the destructive force that favoritism plays in in a family.

Well, Jacob's living out his name, and we first see it when Esau comes back from hunting and he is famished, and Jacob has a stew on the fire ready, and Esau goes, Give me some of that food.

I'm about to die, I'm about to pass out.

And Jacob says, Give me your birthright.

Now, in the ancient day, the birthright was the eldest son got two-thirds of the inheritance, the younger son got a third.

It's a big deal of all that your parents had.

And he says, Give me your birthright and I'll give you some stew.

And Esau's like, What good is my birthright if I'm dead?

Give me the stew, you can have it.

So he manipulates Esau for the birthright.

And then later, even though God had promised Rebekah that he was gonna use Jacob, Rebecca, she works together with uh Jacob to manipulate their father Isaac.

And they devised this really elaborate plan to manipulate Isaac into give uh into giving Jacob the blessing.

In fact, this is what Esau said of his brother.

He said, Isn't he rightly named Jacob?

This is the second time he's taken advantage of me.

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

Forced to flee for his life because now Esau is so angry he wants to kill him.

The core theme for uh Jacob's early life Jacob hustles for blessing through deceit, living out the broken identity spoken over him.

Now, for us, here's here's it here's where it matters.

Come on.

We pretend to live into the names spoken over us.

Names are powerful.

Now we again we don't name people today based on character traits or qualities or these sort of things, but people speak words into our lives.

You maybe had a parent that spoke a word into your life, you maybe had a boss that said something, a coworker, a mentor, a coach, a friend.

And those names are powerful.

We tend to live into, we tend to live out the names that are spoken over us.

We live out the name like you're nobody, you're worthless.

We live out the name that you have to perform in such a way to be approved.

Live out the name that you're only as good as your last performance.

Live out the name, hey, nobody really likes you.

It's interesting.

Negativity is actually the negative names stick way more than the positive ones.

Um scientifically, uh, is Dr.

Rick Hansen writes this the brain is like velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.

He notes that at least two regions of the brain, the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex, work harder when processing criticism and keep the brain from doing much else.

Positive experiences have to be held in our awareness for more than 12 seconds in order for it to transfer from short-term to long-term memory.

And it takes five to ten positive experiences to counteract one negative experience.

Negative names are far more sticky than positive ones.

That's why that one comment by that one person has stuck with you for so long.

You know, there was a name as a kid for me that just kind of stuck with me.

And it was it was lazy.

I got called lazy a few times and it just stuck with me.

And and like the most generous explanation is like, okay, there's some really good intent hearts of intention of like, hey, we see potential, but we really want you to grow, and and it actually just like made me not want to do anything of that, which made me look lazier.

Um but then I spent the next decade and a half trying to prove that I wasn't lazy.

So I worked harder, worked harder, and you know what I did?

It's interesting, it seeps into our conversation.

You can hear it.

We can hear one another's names we're living out if we listen carefully, by the way.

If we're talking, I'd always have to tell you how early I got up, how long I worked, how much I accomplished, so that you knew I wasn't that name.

Let me ask you what names are shaping your life?

What is that name?

Maybe it's the name you've been running from, the name you've been trying to prove wrong, or the name you feel is inevitable of this is just who you are.

And parents a word to us.

Oh, let us be so wise with our words.

Be so wise in the what we speak over our kids because we tend to live into the names spoken over us.

Jacob's early life, he was simply living out his name.

Then we see exile years.

We would rightly call it the school of hard knocks.

Esau seeks to kill Jacob, his mom devises yet another plan, sends Jacob to relatives in Haran to find a wife.

This would be Jacob's exile years.

Twenty years away from home.

As Jacob's on the run, he stops to sleep, and the text tells us that he's just going.

It got dark, he had no plans, didn't know where he's going to stay, and so he's in this remote place and he sleeps, he just goes to sleep.

Now I know you're like, well, don't we all do that?

But not like this.

He used a rock as a pillow.

I'm like, come on, you that doesn't sound very comfortable.

Even back then, I don't think that was very comfortable.

You could come up with something else.

But he uses a rock for a pillow, he sleeps, and God meets him in the wilderness.

God meets him on the run.

God meets him when in the middle of his active deception.

It's where we get uh the stairway of heaven where God meets him and confirms and reconfirms his covenant both with Abraham, Isaac, and now him.

And this is what Jacob says when he wakes up.

He says, Surely the Lord was in this place, and I was not aware of it.

We're gonna circle back to that in just a moment, but I want to continue on with Jacob's story.

When he gets to Haran, he he falls head over heel in love with his uncle's daughter, Rachel.

So uh Laban, his uncle, says, Work for me for seven years and you can marry Rachel.

Now, the deceiver now becomes the deceived.

Laban begins a series of deceit against uh Jacob here, and he deceives uh he deceives Jacob, and in the ancient day, and some cultures still today, the wedding uh lasted about a week.

It was a big party, and then there was the wedding night in the midst of this week, and there was lots of celebration and probably lots of drinking, and you're like, there's a little bit of how the text breaks it out.

It leaves us to go, okay, what all?

I don't know how this worked out, but Laban gives his older daughter Leah to Jacob that night to be his wife.

It wasn't until the morning that he woke up that he realized he was with the wrong one.

I don't know.

You fill in the blanks.

But he woke up and he realizes he got deceived.

And Laban says, Hey, work another seven years and I'll give you Rachel as well.

And what we step into here is he marries Rachel's, then there's rivalry and hurt and pain between the sisters, and they give uh Jacob their maidservants for having more sons, and then builds a large, dysfunctional family.

And we see these exiled years is filled with struggles of family rivalry, jealousy, competition between the wise.

And the core theme here is Jacob reaps what he sowed.

Deception begets deception, and yet at the same time, God meets him in the wilderness with grace.

I want to return to Jacob on the run and in his encounter with God.

He says, This surely God was in this place, and I was not aware of it.

Now, the ancient uh Celtic Christians had this concept of thin space.

Thin space was this place where the boundary line between heaven and earth was especially thin.

It was a place where you would encounter and have an encounter with God.

It just felt like where heaven and earth met.

And perhaps it could be a sacred place like a church or a cathedral, but more often it was like maybe it's the ocean or the mountains or the redwoods where you go and you just your heart, you're like, I just meet God there.

Jacob's thin space.

Jacob was on the run.

Jacob was living in deception.

Jacob was in the wilderness, and that was the thin place where the boundary line between heaven and earth met him.

You see, there is no place where God's grace cannot break in.

There is no place where God's grace cannot break in.

And when some of us, we may be in the wilderness of broken dreams.

We may be in the wilderness of disappointments.

Maybe you're running from God.

Maybe you're filled with doubt or anxiety or loneliness or failure.

Maybe you're in the wilderness of past mistakes or disillusionment.

There is no place where God's grace cannot break in.

So let me ask you this.

When do you feel far from God?

Not where.

But when.

Maybe you feel far from God right now.

When do you feel far from God?

In that moment.

See, the truth of the gospel is though you may feel far from God, God is not far from you.

That moment.

And those are the moments, right?

Those are the moments when we feel far from God, what do we do?

We think God is far from us, or we get farther from Him.

For Jacob, you know what it was?

Thin space.

Come on, some people.

What if when you are far from God is actually the thin space God wants to meet you, his grace wants to break through?

What if instead of running?

What if instead of putting up walls?

What if instead of just somehow going, God doesn't want me, you recognize it is thin space moment, and his grace is waiting to break through?

The way the apostle Paul would say it is where sin abounds, grace superabounds, his grace is breaking through.

And here's what Joseph said surely God was in this place, and what?

I wasn't aware of it.

Could it be that God is in that place and he's with you?

You're just not aware of it.

What if thin space is just becoming more aware of what God is doing right where you're at?

Where do you feel?

Far from God.

What if that's the very place where his grace is waiting to break through for you?

Early years, Jacob's living out his life.

Exile years.

Exile years, he begins to encounter God along the way, but he experienced the school of hard knocks.

Well, after 20 years of living with Laban, he had worn out his welcome.

He actually pulled an Irish goodbye, leaving secretly, which did not go over well at all.

Laban catches up to him.

It could have gone real poorly, but things work out.

And we see the next phase of Jacob's life, the return home, which the pinnacle for him was wrestling with God.

Twenty years had passed.

He's returning home, still afraid of his brother.

On his way home, he's figuring out a scheme as he's heading down.

He's, you know, sending delegates ahead of him, trying to somehow, you know, appease Esau.

He's, in fact, dividing up his family and property in such a way so that Esau, you know, takes out one, he won't take out his whole family.

One night, after doing all this, he sends his wife and kids ahead of him and he's alone.

And this is where we pick up the story.

So Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled him till daybreak.

This is a strange story, by the way.

Let's just call it out.

He's alone, and then a man wrestled him.

When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.

Then the man said, Let me go, for it is daybreak.

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

The man asked him, What is your name?

Now, we're gonna find out that this isn't just a man, this is the angel of the Lord, this is God.

He was not asking Jacob, What is your name?

Because I have no idea what your name is.

What does Jacob's name mean?

Hill grabber, deceiver.

He's asking him, Who are you?

Who have you been?

What's the identity that you've been carrying and that you've been living out?

What is your name?

See, the truth is God cannot heal what we disguise and what we cover up.

God can only heal the real you.

What is your name?

Jacob.

Deceiver, manipulator.

That's what I've been doing since a kid.

It's the identity I've been living out.

It's my name, it's my identity, it's it's everything.

And the man says, Your name will no longer be Jacob but Israel.

Because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.

Your name is no longer Jacob, it's no longer deceiver.

I'm giving you a brand new name.

It's one who struggles, who's wrestled with God.

We're gonna land on that in just a second, but I want to give you the rest of something that's really beautiful that happens in the text.

What we find is after 20 years of vitriol, of hatred, 20 years where Jacob's returning, afraid for his life with his brother Esau, we see the impossible happen.

Reconciliation between Esau and Jacob.

By the way, there is probably a relationship that you have that you feel is irreconcilable, impossible, a family member, a friend, a coworker.

When God is in the mix, reconciliation is always possible.

Doesn't mean it's always going to happen.

But we discount the work of God and we shut it out when we give, there's no option.

He returns to Bethel, God renews his commitment, God refers, reaffirms his covenant and promise in his new name.

He becomes the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Core theme here: God gives Jacob a new identity, no longer a deceiver, but one marked by grace, dependence, and covenants.

Last theme, season of Jacob's life, is wrestling with God.

This moment changed the very trajectory of his life.

Here's what I want us to see.

When we wrestle with God, he gives us a new name.

When we wrestle with God, we actually are given a new name.

God is in the business of giving us new names.

That's what he does.

Now, fundamentally, when you put your faith in Christ, you are bestowed and given a brand new name and brand new identity.

The problem is, is we constantly live out our old identity, our old name, even though we have a new family last name.

Wrestling with God is how he removes our old identity and gives us a brand new name.

I want you to see this.

This is good.

Jacob came out of the womb, he'll grab her, right?

Clinging.

Getting his new name.

What was he doing?

He was clinging.

Like the very thing that started off that was distorted, that was dysfunctional, that was broken.

And God says, I'm gonna redeem that, I'm gonna renew that.

And when you cling unto me, I'm gonna give you a brand new name.

No longer heel grabber, but one who clings to God.

One who holds on to God.

See, when you are clinging unto God, you cannot cling on to your old identity.

He's like, I'm just clinging unto you.

I'm holding on to you.

I love Psalm 63, by the way.

It starts off in a dry and weary land where there's no water.

My soul, you quench my soul, my soul thirsts for you.

But then it says this my soul clings to you.

Because sometimes the only thing we can do is cling.

The only thing we know to do is, I don't know where to go.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know anything more.

But God, I'm just gonna hold on to you.

Wrestling with God, by the way, is not resisting God.

See, that's where some of us are at.

We're resisting God.

We got stiffed arm.

We're like, hey, I don't want anything to do with you.

I don't mess with my life.

And we're we're we got arms stretched out like this.

This is our God, and like, hey, I'm wrestling with God.

No, you're not, you're resisting God.

Wrestling with God is about engaging God with your whole self.

Engaging God with your questions, your disappointment, your pain, your longing, your desperation.

It's refusing to let go until he speaks, until he blesses, until he gives you a new name.

Let me ask you.

Where do you need to wrestle with God?

Where do you need to wrestle with God?

Maybe today simply the very beginning point is God's asking you, what is your name?

What is your identity?

Whose voice is loudest in your life that you have been living out?

And you just begin to name it.

Man, my name has been addiction.

My name has been despair.

My name has been failure, but in Christ I am more than a conqueror.

That is my new name, more than a conqueror.

My name has been unworthy.

I don't feel worthy, and in Christ I am worthy.

My name, I feel like damaged goods.

I feel invaluable, but in Christ I am valuable.

I am so valuable that God stepped into time, space, history for me, took on flesh, and went to the cross for me.

How valuable are you for Him to come and die for you?

That's how valuable.

There is no one who is invaluable.

What's the name you've been living out?

Where do you need to wrestle with God?

I think some of us are wrestling with God because we came and we have this longing to have a personal relationship with God.

We long to know God.

And yet there's this internal battle of the wills.

Because we recognize to know God there is a surrendering to God, and I don't want to do that.

And the Holy Spirit's actually speaking and drawing you right now.

And so there's this like internal tug-of-war.

Will you surrender to him?

Will you go, God?

I long to know you and long to have a relationship with you through your son Jesus.

Would you come into my life and make me new?

And you're wrestling with God, and in this moment, would you wrestle and go, God, I'm gonna cling to you until I hear your voice.

Some of us were wrestling, it's a surrender issue.

Maybe you've been so you've you you've wandered far from God.

And you're like the Spirit of God's got drawing your voice, come back, come back, come back, come back.

And you're wrestling.

Do I want to surrender?

God would today I want to return to you.

With God.

Just gonna give us a moment.

But you take time.

And with Jesus, would you identify the name that you are living out?

The voice that is loudest in your life.

And in this moment, would you uh invite his voice to be louder than that?

To speak louder and loudly to you.

The truth of who you are in him, that you would cling to that until it resonates of this is who you are.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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