Heroic: Open to Change with Pastor Ryan Roberts

Welcome to the MetaChurch Podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaChurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Stuck.

Static.

Stagnant.

Has there ever been a time in your life that you've felt this way?

Would there be any of us here today that are honest and transparent enough to admit that there might be areas in our life that we feel stuck in even today?

Well, I've got some bad news.

We might as well get used to it.

Because after all, we're stuck.

And odds are you are going to stay stuck.

Now I know I just made a lot of you really mad at me, but the truth of the matter is that in life we often find ourselves stuck, and we will find ourselves stuck unless there's a way we can become, well, unstuck.

And today that's what we're going to wrestle with.

Would you pray with me?

Father God, we just thank you for being here.

You said that wherever two or more gather in your name, you're right there in the middle of them.

And so we just welcome your presence here today.

In fact, we say, Holy Spirit, have your way here.

I just pray, Lord, that you would open our hearts to what you want to speak to us through your word.

May it not be my words, but your words that come forth.

And we just purpose to be a people with hearts open to what you want to do in our lives.

We thank you for it.

We thank you for choosing to use us to make a difference in this world.

Amen.

Well, I want to welcome you guys to week three of our heroic series.

As Pastor Clayton said, we've been in this series where we've been really looking at heroes of scripture.

And for those of you, if we haven't had the opportunity to meet, my name is Ryan.

I am your next gym pastor here at MetaCurch.

And so what that means is I get to hang out in Metakids and hang out on Sunday nights with at Meta youth.

And I've been loving this series focused on living a heroic life because that's what we're all about when it comes to Metakids and Meta Youth.

We want to encourage and empower this next generation to live a heroic life.

We say it this way in Metakids and Medic.

We say that we exist to empower this next generation to discover belonging, identity, and purpose in Jesus.

Belonging, identity, and purpose.

Now that's the heroic life.

And to be honest with you, as we're talking about being stuck a moment ago, being stuck is something that is a little uncomfortable for me.

It's a topic that makes me a little apprehensive.

You see, a few years ago, my family and I were on vacation and we were just having a great time, and we were at the coast out on the East Coast, and decided to take a boat out.

I got to drive the boat, it was amazing.

Decided to kind of try to give a little bit of a cushion from some of this other traffic and actually ran the boat aground.

It was humiliating and embarrassing.

I literally got us stuck on our family vacation, and it was horrible.

Literally had to have someone come out and rescue us.

And to make matters worse, the tide was going out at the same time.

And so here's all these boats just cruising by, and we're on this sandbar just smiling and waving.

And literally, just the very next family vacation.

I had this great idea to go off-roading in our SUV.

It was gonna be amazing.

And what I didn't realize was that the ground, even though it was covered with grass and foliage, it was just sand.

And so I literally, the very next vacation, I got us stuck yet again.

And so it's kind of in our family become this continuous joke every time we go on vacation.

Oh no, what's what's dad gonna get us into now?

What how's dad gonna get us stuck this time?

And you laugh, but for me, it's not so funny.

But it's become just this pattern and this common predicament in our family.

And so it's it's so bad that it's just it's become what I've known for.

It's become part of my identity.

And they're just waiting for me to get stuck again.

You know, in each of those cases, I had to humble myself and make that call to get help.

I had to humble myself and allow someone else to pull me out, to someone else to help me get unstuck.

And today I want you to just know right off the bat, that is not me.

That is not my role to get you unstuck.

My role today is to be that person in the boat next to you who's saying, hey, hey, here, here's here's help coming.

Help us on the way.

My role today is to be that person on the side of the road next to you saying, hey, here comes Jesus.

He's the one that can help you.

He's the one that can get you unstuck.

The problem in life oftentimes is that we can't get unstuck until we first take account of where we're at in life, until we're first ready to be open to change.

You know, when I was stuck in my SUV and it was just so frustrating to be spinning my wheels and going nowhere.

And it can be incredibly painful in this life that we live to feel like we're just spinning our wheels, that we're we're stuck.

And in those seasons, we often may feel like we just fall off of the hero's journey.

There's this common temptation to just think that if I can just dream it hard enough, if I can just try hard enough, then I can I can live the life that I was meant to be, that I was meant to live, that I can I can actuate a better tomorrow.

The truth is we first have to wrestle with where we are today, and then we have to realize that we can't afford to stay where we're at before we can ever move on to what God has for us tomorrow.

You see, pleasure and the hope of reward, they can be a motivator, but truthfully, pain is a much more effective motivator.

It's when we allow ourselves to see clearly just how painful the path that we may really be on.

It's only then that we can have a real chance of allowing God to change us into who He's created us to be.

And I don't know about you, but I've experienced times in my life where I just feel stuck.

And I'm not, honestly, to be transparent, just like, why bother?

I mean, nothing's gonna change.

I I feel stuck.

I've I've always struggled with this, I'm always gonna struggle with that, I've always been this way, I've always been that.

And maybe you've had some of those same thoughts wrestling in your mind.

Maybe today you are like, man, my marriage is on the rocks, and I feel like it's always been that way.

From day one, I don't feel like there's any hope of it ever changing.

Maybe you have a relationship with a child or a parent or maybe a friendship, and you're just like, Man, I just don't know where this relationship is going.

Maybe it's in your career and you feel just stuck in a dead-end job, and you really thought you've been higher on the corporate ladder by now, but you feel stuck.

Maybe it's in your finances and you're you just struggle with the weight and the burden of debt, and you feel like there's no way out.

Maybe it's with a habit that you just feel there's no escape from, and it doesn't matter how much regret you have afterwards or how much self-loathing, you just can't seem to shake it.

We all go through seasons in life where we feel stuck, stagnant, static.

Perhaps we should just accept it.

Just give in and get used to being stuck.

The good news is that we are not unique when it comes to this.

We're not the only ones who have ever had to struggle like this.

In fact, the Bible is full of ordinary people who had extraordinary impact.

In fact, that's why we're doing this series called Heroic.

We're looking at people in Scripture who had just lived ordinary lives, who had hang-ups and shortcomings just like you and I, but yet they had extraordinary impact.

We've actually been using chapter 11 of the book of Hebrews in the Christian scriptures in the New Testament as our main text.

And this passage of scripture is known as the Faith Hall of Fame or the Hall of Heroes, as we've been calling it.

And we've been studying the heroes of this passage, not just to learn some Sunday school lessons, we've been studying them to learn what it was in their lives that enabled them to overcome a common life and enable them to fulfill the purpose that God had for them.

That enabled them to live an extraordinary and a heroic life.

Because we know this, that if perhaps we can learn what they learned, if perhaps we can practice what they put into practice, maybe two, you and I could live a heroic life.

You know, Pastor Clayton's been describing this hero's journey, and it's not an easy journey.

In fact, it is often covered with pain and sacrifice.

But it is the journey that we want to take.

It is worth the cost.

In this heroic series, we've discovered a list of traits that will empower us to live as heroes.

In the past few weeks, we've learned how heroes have faith.

It's a common trait we saw in all of them.

We've learned how heroes escape temptation.

Last week we learned how heroes rely on God.

And this week, this week we're gonna look at Jacob, who was maybe one of the most uh surprising heroes of them all, because much of Jacob's life, he lived anything but a heroic life.

No matter what we where you're at in your journey, though, we're gonna learn from Jacob that heroic lives must be open to change.

If you have your Bible, or if you have your phone and you got your Bible app on there, I encourage you now to join me in Hebrews chapter 11, and we're gonna pick up with reading about Jacob.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Hebrews 11 and verse 21 says this by faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and he worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.

That's it, folks.

That's our main text for today.

I know it seems so simple and so insignificant, but the truth is as we're gonna see in the life of Jacob today, those 24 words are so full and rich of significance.

To better understand this verse, we need to first start at the beginning of Jacob's journey.

And literally, we're gonna go back to the very birth of this man named Jacob.

You see, Jacob was born into a very prominent uh uh family.

He you may have heard of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I mean, this was like the the main three, the main triad in the Old Testament.

Abraham was who God called out and said, Man, I'm gonna use you to birth a nation.

I'm gonna use you, and from you is gonna come a whole multitude of people.

And then his son Isaac was like a legend.

I mean, he just lived a life of a hero as well.

And then his son was Jacob.

And Jacob was born a twin with his brother Esau.

What's interesting is that from the very beginning of Jacob's life, he was like this villain.

I mean, he like from the very beginning, he literally was born.

Esau, his brother was born first, and Jacob was born and literally grasped on to the heel of his brother.

He literally, as he was born, was grasping on to his brother's heel.

And literally from childhood, Jacob was a deceiver.

In fact, that's what his name meant.

I mean, how many of y'all would love it if your name, if your parents named you a deceiver?

Yeah, thanks a lot, mom and dad.

That's literally what his name meant.

This character trait haunted him throughout his life.

It really just dictated his identity and it dictated who he hung out with.

You know, it was interesting, is in that culture, uh, it really mattered if you were the firstborn.

To be the oldest uh among all your siblings, it was important because you actually got this thing that was called a birthright.

You literally got a double portion of inheritance.

Now that was a big deal back then.

I mean, that could be, could just significantly affect the trajectory of your life.

And so not only did you get a double portion of the inheritance, you were the first one to carry on the family name and the promise and everything that is contained in that, in your bloodline.

Today I want to share with you a little bit from Jacob's story.

It's found in the Old Testament book of Genesis and in chapter 25.

It says this Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field exhausted.

Again, this is his brother Esau.

He came in, he'd been out hunting, he was exhausted.

He said to Jacob, let me eat some of that red stuff because I'm exhausted.

That is why he was also named Edom, which actually means red.

Jacob replied, First, sell me your birthright.

Now, let me just kind of put this in context because this literally would be like, hey, I want a bowl of stew, and Jacob is like, okay, I'll give you a bowl of soup for two million dollars.

I mean, that's literally the scale of what he's asking.

He says, I'll give you a bowl of stew if you'll sell me your birthright.

And here's where it gets interesting.

Esau does it.

He does it.

He says, Esau says, I'm about to die anyway.

So what good is a birthright to me?

He was has such a short-term perspective of his life.

He said, It's not doing me any good right now.

I'm about ready to die.

Jacob said, Well, swear to me first.

So he swore to Jacob and sold his birthright to him.

Then Jacob gave bread and lentil stew to Esau.

He ate, he drank, he got up and went away.

And in this manner, Esau despised his birthright.

Esau literally sold his birthright.

He literally sold a double portion of his inheritance for a bowl of stinking soup.

I mean, can you believe it?

Esau chose the lust of present pleasure and lost his future reward.

And Jacob, here's Jacob in the wings.

I mean, he was more than happy to do it.

He was more than happy to manipulate and connive and steal and take advantage of his brother.

He was more than happy to do it.

But Jacob didn't stop there.

He had his brother's birthright.

In those days, there's also what was known as a blessing.

And when a father would get old and be near to dying, he would bless his children.

And he always gave the best blessing to the firstborn.

As you read on in that scripture, you see that Jacob and his mother actually conspired with each other to trick their father, trick Jacob's father, and to steal Esau's blessing, too.

I mean, this guy is like messed up.

He is just, he's taking everything he can from his brother.

He's just deceiving his dad, Isaac, and stealing what was rightfully belonging to his brother.

You see, Jacob was a deceiver.

And he wasn't just a deceiver, he was a manipulator, he was a thief, he was a con artist.

And yet we find him in the chapter in Hebrews listed as a hero.

You see, he was the opposite of anything heroic in his life most of his life.

He was a villain of the worst sorts.

And yet he ends up in this hero's hall of fame.

And I don't know about you, but that should give you and me hope.

It gives me hope because I know how jacked up I am, and yet this guy was recognized as a hero.

You see, God uses ordinary people like you and like me, if we'll just open up to him to use, to do extraordinary things and have an extraordinary impact in this world.

Most of us have lived much of our lives as victims or villains.

And if we're honest, there's probably been times and seasons in our life where we've been both.

The thing is that the longer we live as victims and as villains, the harder it is to be open to change.

And to live a heroic life, we must be open to change.

At this point in Jacob's life, he was definitely not open to change.

And so Jacob's brother, Esau, he literally vows to kill Jacob.

He runs him out of town trying to kill him.

And so Jacob flees for his life.

Now, here's the thing about living a non-heroic life, living a life as a victim or a villain, you tend to attract people that are on the same path you are.

In other words, your vibe attracts your tribe.

Or you can say this way that liars attract liars, uh uh uh cheaters attract cheaters, deceivers attract deceivers, and that's exactly what happened in Jacob's life.

Jacob attracted other deceivers.

He actually went and escaped to visit his uncle Laban.

And man, I tell you what, Jacob got a taste of his own medicine when it came to dealing with his uncle Laban.

You know, actually, on his way to Laban's house, he encountered who he thought was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

And he was like, Man, I've got to have her, I want her to be my wife.

He was as truly was like love at first sight.

And so he turns out this was Rachel Laban's daughter, and so he just shows up in his uncle's house and he's like, right off the bat, hey, I want to marry your daughter.

And Laban's like, okay, I'm cool with that.

Um, that's that's fine.

He said, but what I need you to do is to work seven years for me.

He's like, all you gotta do is work seven years, and I'll give you my daughter's hand in marriage.

And you know what?

This is he's in love.

Jacob's in love, so he's like, all right, that's seven years, no problem.

No problem, I'll do it.

I'm away from my brother, I got a steady job, I'm getting the girl of my dreams, life is good.

So he worked for seven years, and and then fast forward seven years to later in that chapter, and uh in fact, let's just read it.

In chapter 29 and verse 21.

It says, Then Jacob said to Laban, Since my time is complete, give me my wife so I can sleep with her.

So Laban invited all the men of the place and sponsored a feast.

So so he he he proposes to be married to her.

He he he Laban says, All right, you can get married.

I'm gonna throw a party, we're gonna have a marriage celebration.

It says there that evening, Laban took his daughter, Leah, took his daughter Leah, and gave her to Jacob, and he slept with her.

Now I want you to picture this.

This is the night after his wedding, and Jacob is waking up, and I mean, this guy is probably on top of the world, right?

I mean, he's escaped from his brother Esau to live another day.

He's had a steady job for seven years.

I mean, he just got to marry the the woman of his dreams, and then he rolls over and looks at the other pillow, and it's Leah.

It's not even Rachel, it's the wrong woman.

I don't know about you guys, but it's that's a bad thing.

You never want to walk, wake up in bed with your bride's sister.

It was he was like, What is going on?

What happened?

And if this isn't poetic justice, I don't know what it is because the deceiver has been deceived, the the manipulator has now been manipulated.

The con man has been conned.

And so Laban tells him that, well, I couldn't let uh my younger daughter get married before my older daughter.

It's just not our custom.

He he really manipulated and tricked Jacob, all for the purpose of getting more work out of him.

He said, if you will work seven more years, then I will give you my daughter Rachel.

Now, I can guarantee you that Jacob did not like the way that felt.

Not only was he tricked in order to marry Rachel, but he had to work another seven years.

In this story, it's interesting because Laban is just like Jacob.

He's like a mirror to Jacob.

You know, Jacob experiences exactly what he's done to other people for his whole life.

And these consequences that he encounters, it's interesting because consequences can actually Open us and open our eyes to the broken path that we're on.

If we let them, circumstances and consequences can actually cause us to be open to the change that we so desperately need.

So Jacob goes on and he spends 20 years, literally 20 years in Laban's household.

And it's really interesting if you read the whole story because Jacob has been cheated and mistreated by Laban, and really the deceit and the trickery, it goes back and forth.

At one point in time, Jacob is the villain and Laban's the victim, and then they flip rolls and the other is the victim.

It's really just back and forth at how manipulative and deceitful and destructive these guys were at each other.

You know, I think about Jacob about how many nights he must have wondered if he would wake up with his brother's blade at his throat.

If he would wake up and it'd be his last day.

Jacob finally had his things going right, a steady job, his wife, he was away from his brother.

And then what guess what God says to do?

God tells him to go home.

I don't know about you, but I would be like, God, I don't know if you know, but my brother is there at home.

He wants to kill me.

Are you sure you want me to go home?

I'm sure he had to have mixed emotions about this because he's been gone for 20 years.

But nevertheless, he listens to God even at risk to himself.

Could it be that Jacob is finally so sick of the painful path that he's been on that he's ready to change?

Could it be that Jacob is so sick and tired of being stuck that he's finally open to change?

It's interesting as he's deciding to go back home, he he's really feeling nervous about meeting his brother, and so he actually sends uh some men ahead to kind of scout out and see what it's like back there at home.

And when they come back to give him a report, it is not good news.

He actually finds out that his brother Esau is on his way out to meet him, and he's got 400 men with him.

I don't know about you, but that'd be a little intimidating.

That's not the welcome party he was looking for.

And so what he does is he actually starts to split up into groups, all of his family, all the people that were traveling with him, all of his herds, all of his wealth, and he begins to send them forward in group after group, hoping to appease the anger of his brother.

He sends them group after group, all in hope of this being an acceptable gift to Esau so he won't kill him.

And what's interesting is after he sent all of those ahead, all of the family, all of his livestock, all of his wealth, he sent it all ahead, and he's just left with himself.

It's interesting when he's alone, he actually has this encounter with God.

And we're gonna pick up reading his story again in Genesis chapter 32.

Genesis 32 · chapter mention

In verse 24, it says, Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

When the man saw that he could not defeat him, he struck Jacob's hip socket as they wrestled, and it dislocated his hip.

Then he said to Jacob, Let me go for it as daybreak.

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

What is your name?

The man asked.

And Jacob, he replied, It's interesting, I'm sure, as you'll find out later in the story, this was a manifestation of God that he was wrestling with, and I'm sure you wonder why was he asking what my name is?

He said his name was Jacob, deceiver.

Your name will no longer be Jacob.

He said, It'll be Israel.

Israel, which means one who wrestles with God.

It'll be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.

Then Jacob asked him, please tell me your name.

But he answered, Why do you ask my name?

And he blessed him then and there.

And Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been spared.

You see, Jacob has spent his whole life wrestling.

He was wrestling with people and circumstances and situations.

And I know there's somebody here today who feels the same way.

You probably feel like you've been wrestling your whole life, like your whole life has been a struggle.

Like you're wrestling with people and situations, or maybe at times you even feel like you're just wrestling with yourself.

And I need you to know this today that it wasn't until Jacob wrestled with God and received God's blessing that he gained a new perspective.

It wasn't until Jacob wrestled with God that he began to walk this hero's journey.

He had an experience where he literally wrestled with God and he was fully exposed and vulnerable before God.

And it radically changed his life.

God actually changed Jacob's name and his identity in that moment.

He changed him from being Jacob the deceiver to being I to being Israel, the one who wrestles with God.

And today I want to do, I wanted to give you freedom to do just that.

Today I want to give you freedom to wrestle with God.

See, God isn't put on the defensive when you come at him.

God isn't, he doesn't run or cower when you come at him.

In fact, God wants you to come at him.

He says, Come to me with your problems, with your questions, come to me with your doubts, come to me with your anger and your frustrations when things just don't seem to be the way they should.

He wants you to come and to wrestle with him.

He says, He welcomes your wrestling because he welcomes you.

This was the first time in his life that Jacob was open to change.

Jacob goes on, and as you know, we see him in Hebrews 11 in the Heroes Hall of Fame, having lived a truly heroic life, but it didn't happen overnight, and it didn't happen until he was open to change.

And when he opened to change, it opened the door for God to do what he wanted to do in his life, for God to work out the purpose and the plan that he had for him, for him to live out that purpose that he had for his life.

Now let's look back one more time at that, what seemed to be a pretty mundane passage of scripture in Hebrews 11 and verse 21.

By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and he worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.

I told you these 24 words were packed with significance.

This seems like a glowing description of a life well lived.

But as we know, Jacob did not live a heroic life for much of his life.

I love this verse because it starts with by faith.

And you'll see that this is a common thread that we see in the men and the women who are in this hall, this hero's Hall of Fame, this hero's hall of faith, is that they lived by faith.

And by faith they had extraordinary impact in their world.

It says he blessed each of the sons of Joseph.

I mean, can you get the irony?

Do you see the irony of that?

This was the same dude that stole a blessing from people, that stole his brother's blessing, and now he's giving blessing.

You see, God takes the pain and the troubles in our past and wants to use them to bless someone else's life.

He wants to take the difficulties and the struggles that you had in your past and use them to bless and to impact someone else's life.

It says he was leaning on his staff.

We see that Jacob was still marked by an encounter he had with God one day.

And if you will have an encounter with God today, your life will forever be marked the same.

When Jacob blessed Joseph's sons, it says, it's interesting because if you go back and look in Genesis, when Jacob was blessing Joseph's sons, what he literally was doing was he was trying to get his descendants to not settle in Goshen in this area of Egypt where they were at.

He didn't want them to settle there.

He didn't want them to settle for less than God had for him.

He wanted them to press on and to receive the promised land that God had promised them.

Jacob didn't want them to settle, and God doesn't want us to settle too.

Matt Church, God doesn't want you to settle for less than the plan and the purpose that He has for you.

Wrestling with God was the moment that Jacob started on the hero's journey.

And so I've got a couple questions for you today.

When is the last time you really wrestled with God?

As I said, God, He welcomes your wrestling.

He welcomes you to come because He loves you.

When is the last time you really wrestled with God?

When is the last time you really wrestled with how your life is going?

Are you living life as a hero or a victim or a villain?

Let me ask you this.

What would living a heroic life, what would that look like for you in your story?

In your situation right now, today?

And one final question.

What is one way?

What is one way that you can purpose today to become open to the change that God wants to bring about in your life?

What is one thing?

What is that one thing when I asked that that just popped in your mind?

That you can be open to allowing God to change this week.

You know, the truth is most people they get stuck in toxic habits and problematic patterns and unhealthy relationships, and we truthfully often are too prideful to be willing to open to change.

That's why we get stuck.

But I love what that scripture says in Hebrews, when the author of Hebrews says, but not us.

We are not those who shrink back.

Mad Church, we are not those who shrink back, but like the heroes of Hebrews 11, we are those who have faith.

We are those who are ordinary people, but by faith we are going to do extraordinary things to impact our city, to reach this city and to reach the people around you for Jesus.

Mad Church, God is calling us to live a heroic life.

God is calling you to live a heroic life.

And heroic lives are open to change.

Would you pray with me?

Father God, we just are thankful for your word, for the scriptures, the letter you wrote to us.

It's so full of how we can grow and be more like you.

Lord, we we purpose today to live that heroic life that you've laid out for us, to walk out the purpose, to fulfill the potential that you have for us.

And so I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would touch each and every person's heart and and help them identify with that one thing.

What is one thing that they can put into practice?

Show me what is the one thing I can put into practice in my life today.

Lord, we thank you for never leaving us.

You're always with us and you're always leading us on to live that heroic life.

It's in Jesus' mighty name that we pray.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.