In God We Trust - Surviving and Kinda Standing | Sunday Message

Welcome to the Do Life Different Podcast by 1128 Community.

Today you're listening to our most recent message.

We are a church community in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, led by co-pastors Mike and Colleen Francisco.

1128 is about helping people do life different by setting rhythms and values with Jesus at the center.

If you want to connect with us, text the word podcast to 414-441-1128.

We hope today's message helps you in your faith journey.

Something you may not know, or maybe you've assumed, I don't know where you're at in this, but I plan out our messages, our series like months in advance.

Like I'm already right now working on what we're going to be doing next fall.

I'm not like writing out the weekly messages at this point, but I'm putting together the bones and the structure and planning out all of the year and thinking how things are going to fit together and work together and how the year is going to come together.

So I put together these overviews.

I think through the scriptures, I pray through the scriptures.

A lot of it comes out of what I'm reading at home personally, and then I might experience something in life, and I'll be like, oh, that's a great story.

I should include that in a message.

That'll fit here or there.

I come up with examples and I got this like all these little notes and files and things kind of all piling together.

And then I get to the week of and I write out the message and I'm like, oh, that came together beautifully.

And then I get to Saturday and I'm like good to go, right?

This week, the message that I had planned, everything that I'd put together and prepared for, going back like you know, several months at this point, I was like, okay, and I hammered it out on Tuesday, and I was like, good, I'm good.

Uh, you know, and then I sat there with it.

And then Wednesday morning, we had a prayer and retreat morning with uh some of our extended church family at an awesome space right in Franklin, actually, that I had no idea existed.

If you want to know more about it, check with me later.

But we we went out for this prayer and retreat morning, and I'm sitting there, and I just something came over me and was like, this message that you have for Sunday, it's it's not it's not like complete.

I was like, okay.

So I I I go back to it on Thursday and and I rework it and and I rewrite parts of it, and I'm like, all right.

Yeah, I think I think this is it, but still something felt a little bit off.

So here's what you do.

Like, as a pastor, you you you might say to your spouse, like, hey, give me your feedback on this, right?

So yesterday, because I'm still wrestling with it yesterday, I'm like, hey, Colleen, can you read through this?

And just let me know, like, does this feel like the message for tomorrow?

And she read through it.

She didn't even have any words, and she just went.

It's like, okay.

But but I knew like deep down, like God had been stirring something in me and in my heart since Tuesday and then Wednesday, and kind of throughout the rest of the week.

And I was like, all right, give me, give me like an hour and a half, two hours.

And so I went down to the basement and I put together the message that I knew God had put in my heart using some of what had already been planned and prepared long ago and some fresh material that he was speaking to me over the last few days.

And so as we step into today's message, I hope and I pray, and I'm trusting that the work that I'd done months ago that that's helpful.

But even more importantly, I'm leaning into Jesus and the way that he has led me this week, believing that this message and the things that come out of it are meant for somebody that's sitting here this morning or somebody that's watching online later.

And so if you haven't been with us over the last couple weeks, we're in a series called In God We Trust.

And when I put this series together, I started off to our graphic design guy, John, and he was like, oh, a series about like money.

I was like, no, it's not about money.

He's like, oh, a series about politics.

I was like, no, definitely not going there.

Like, this is a series about God who has been there from the very beginning and has continued to be there step after step, story after story, each moment of the day, every day of the week, and he will continue to be all the way until the very end.

This is a series focused on who God is and how he's been there with us, alongside us, cheering for us, pushing us, encouraging us, and how we can see God doing that same thing, that same very thing in Scripture from the beginning of times.

Now it's easy sometimes to look at the Bible to say, like, oh, there's a there's a story sitting on the bookshelf in my home.

It just maybe just sits there next to all your other books or or a collection of books, and you're like, yeah, that's a that's a story, that's that's a story of God, you might even think.

But too often we forget that the story that is written in those pages, the story that's hard copy on our bookshelf, is not finished being written.

That God is actually writing that story in us and through us here today.

And so we forget ultimately that we are actually a part of the greatest story ever told.

We are a part of the story of God.

But we forget that.

Anybody forget that or just kind of do your day after day live in and you don't think like, huh, God's writing this story in me and through me, and I am a part of what's going on.

Anybody think about that?

I don't, I don't think about that very often.

And I'm sure that's how Jacob was when he was alive, living out his his story, which we do have in the scriptures to be able to read.

We know that Jacob is a is a pretty important family line throughout all of Scripture.

We know that Jesus actually comes from the line of Jacob.

Now, one thing, my friend Jacob, I was really hoping my friend Jacob, who, hey Jacob, welcome back, man.

Jacob and Rachel, they got a new baby.

So hey, congrats to you guys.

Welcome back.

I was kind of hoping Jacob wouldn't be here today, because I'm I'm gonna ruin his day.

Do you know what Jacob means, Jacob?

Deceiver.

Deceiver.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not, it's it's maybe not the name you want to have.

Like, hey, I'm Jacob, I'm the deceiver, right?

Like that's kind of that's the name Jacob was given, and it's it's kind of like what he lived up to.

If you know anything about Jacob, you you might know that he's the the younger brother of Esau.

Very, very minute time difference in when he was born.

He came out like holding on to Esau, his older brother's foot, right?

And and so you know, if if you've heard of Jacob, you know that he actually deceived Esau into giving him the birthright that was owed to Esau.

He he kind of like bought it for a bowl of lentil soup.

And I don't know, maybe it was the best bowl of lentil soup that was ever made.

I I don't know, but but he deceived him, he tricked him into giving him the birthright, right?

So he he's kind of already like off to a bad start here with his brother.

Uh and and we know that he's very smooth-skinned.

The scripture tells us that Jacob was smooth-skinned and and Esau, his brother, uh, he was not smooth-skinned, he was a hairy guy.

And uh and so Jacob, he he put on goat's skin uh to fool their father Isaac.

And and Isaac uh he he felt him because he couldn't see it this time.

He's blind, and and he's like, Oh, is that really you, Esau?

Like, and and he's like, Yes, it's me.

You know, and he tricks his father into giving him the family blessing.

And because of all this, then he runs away, and and he knew what he had done was wrong.

Like, obviously, he like he deceived him, and so he stole his blessing.

He runs away, and then he goes to live with his uncle for 20 years.

And he ends up marrying both of his uncle's daughters and and then these concubines as well.

So, I mean, this is not like the the guy that you want to like say, like, hey, we're looking to start a new small group.

Do you mind being our leader?

Or, like, yeah, I'm gonna let my kids hang out with you for a few days while I go on a trip.

Like, this isn't necessarily the role model that you want to be looking to.

But here he is in Scripture, and God's gonna do something with them.

This is Jacob.

He's a proud guy, he's self-reliant, and he lives up to his name, the deceiver.

He is a deceitful man.

And and I think sometimes, like, if we were going to spin this in like a positive way, like how we do a lot of times today, we might say Jacob was ambitious and resourceful.

Like we try to make it like best case scenario.

Like he was he was ambitious, he had big dreams, he was just chasing his dreams, and he was gonna do what he had to do to get where he was going, and he was resourceful.

That sounds so much better than pride, self-reliant, and deceitful, doesn't it?

I think it does.

And so we pick up Jacob's story, the story of this proud, deceitful, self-reliant man.

We pick up his story in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

He's on his way now to reconnect with his family and his brother Esau.

At the beginning of the chapter in verse 1, it says, like, on his way to meet up with Esau.

And now in verse 24, where we pick up this story, he sent his family, he sent all of his possessions across the Jabak River.

Here's a uh just a side note that I think of this.

Whenever I hear this passage, I think back to my freshman year in college.

There was a guys' group called Jabak River.

And it was it was just a group for guys to come and like talk about life and talk about struggles and talk about where you're at and to be challenged to live out your faith.

That's not what happened here, though.

There wasn't a small group of guys getting together at the river.

Jacob was left alone, we read in verse 24, because everything had been sent off ahead of him.

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

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

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

Anybody else got questions?

Like this is this is kind of a weird thing.

Like, he's all alone.

We read that he's all alone, and then dude's just there is like, let's wrestle.

Let's go, let's throw down.

And it wasn't just like a quick, like, hey, let's, let's, let's, like, have a playful wrestle here for five, ten minutes.

This was an all-night wrestling match.

I can't imagine.

We used to move the couches out, and this was not Jabak River small group.

This was like dorm room senior year of college situation.

Like, move the couches out of the way and like wrestle there in the front area.

I have no idea why we did it.

I now I think about it, I'm like, that's dumb.

But we did it anyways, and we'd like wrestle and try to like choke each other out and stuff, and we were dumb.

We had nothing else to do.

We lived in the middle of nowhere, Illinois.

That's not what this is either.

Because those things lasted just a few minutes.

This was an all-night wrestling match, JJ and I the other night, because there was nothing else to watch on TV at like 8:30.

We're just kind of scrolling through, and we found the Ultimate Fighting Championship show.

Have anybody have you ever seen this show?

I used to watch it all the time, which is probably why we were inspired to wrestle in our college dorm.

And one of the fighters, Matt Hughes, he actually like trained uh in our gym there, so like we we felt like we knew something about UFC.

But JJ and I, he's never watched this stuff before, right?

He's never seen this kind of fighting.

We turn on the Ultimate Fighting Championship show where where you got amateur guys, jiu-jitsu fighting guys, that they're ultimately trying to win their way to a professional UFC contract.

Now, what we were watching was uh two five-minute rounds.

So we're talking like 10 minutes of like you're going all in, you're all out, like I gotta win this thing, I gotta knock the guy out, break a leg, you know, choke him out, whatever you gotta do.

Like, and JJ and I watched two rounds of this.

After the first round, the one guy's like bleeding out of his thing here, and JJ's like, oh, you know, like he's pretty like worked up and like excited about not worked up like sad way, like he's like, yeah, you know, like this is awesome.

And Colleen's like, why are we watching this?

And so like we watch the first round, and then these guys, they just kind of like go to their corner, and and they got the the cold compacts and whatever they do, you know, there, and like and they're just like they look exhausted.

And then it's round two.

And five more minutes of intense hand-to-hand combat, kicking each other and punching each other, and kneeing each other in the face, and and it gets pretty crazy.

It's not just a little drip of blood, like there's blood like coming down the guy's face, you know, and and they're getting it on each other, and it's it's pretty gruesome stuff.

And then at the end of it, it's like it goes to a judge's decision.

But these two guys, they've fought for 10 minutes, and they can barely stand.

They're just exhausted.

They gave it their all.

Could you imagine an all-night wrestling match?

Like these guys gave 10 minutes, what JJ and I watched the other night.

This doesn't went all night.

I can't imagine how exhausted they must have been.

And we know that it's painful, right?

Because this guy that he's wrestling with, this man who just showed up and was like, let's wrestle.

He he he touches his hip, and his hip gets wrenched in the NLT.

If you were to read that version, it says that his hip is dislocated.

I've never had a dislocated hip, and I hope to never have a dislocated hip.

I imagine that is super painful.

But somehow, Jacob, this proud, self-reliant, deceitful guy, he's like, I'm not letting go.

I'm not giving up.

You can't beat me like this.

I'm not giving up until you give me a blessing.

I'm not letting go until you give me a blessing.

And that feels like a pretty crazy demand to me.

A guy who's like on the verge of tapping out because his hip is dislocated, is sitting here demanding a blessing.

I'm not letting go.

I'm not giving up.

I'm not tapping out until you give me that blessing.

And the man, the man actually says to him, What is your name?

What is your name?

Jacob, he answered.

I'm thinking now, like, this might be a little bit late for the introductions, you know, like maybe before they started fighting and been like, hey, you know, like maybe they they get face to face and have like they know each other, they they introduce each other this way.

But anyway, it's kind of like he's saying to Jacob, like, who are you?

Who are you?

Tell me exactly who you are, Jacob.

Own it.

Acknowledge it.

You are a proud, self-reliant, defeatful man.

Jacob Tell me who you are, and confirm that your mother named you correctly.

What did Jacob say?

I'm Jacob.

He owns it.

He has this moment of honesty where he says, I'm Jacob, knowing full well that his name means deceiver.

Knowing full well that his story is one of pride and arrogance and self-reliance.

I'm Jacob, he owns it.

He has this moment of honesty with this man while holding on for dear life in pain because his hip is out of socket, it's wrenched.

He has this moment.

I'm Jacob.

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

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

And so Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.

The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.

Man, this interaction, it's a it's a powerful interaction.

It's an encounter that changes Jacob's life.

Yes, it leaves him permanently marked because he limps.

He remembers this.

He understands something different about who he is and the way that he must go forward.

But more importantly, he was given a new name.

A name that reflects what happened here.

A name that reflects this encounter with the divine.

Seeing God face to face.

You will be called Israel.

This moment, this wrestling match, this all-nighter, this is the turning point in Jacob's story.

We don't know how the interaction started.

Like that maybe there was more that happened, but but what we do know is that they wrestled all night, and this self-reliant, proud, deceitful man, he was ready to go.

He stood up and he was ready to go.

And it's the way that Jacob always had been: a fighter, a schemer, a deceiver.

He was always the one trying to wrestle things away from others, trying to steal blessings.

He was so dependent on his own grit, his physical toughness, that he thought, I can wrestle this man and I could steal a blessing.

Jacob entered the night as this fugitive running from his past and running from the things he had done, but he exits the night with a new name, a new future, and a reminder that the blessing God had, it came in this moment of broken surrender.

Jacob did not approach God perfectly, but he experienced him powerfully.

Jacob didn't approach him perfectly.

He approached him as a proud, self-reliant, deceitful man.

But in that, God still did something here.

Gave him a new name and allowed Jacob to experience him powerfully.

I know though, like not all of us are in this spot where we're like proud, self-reliant, deceitful people.

We're not ready to fight, we're not ready to throw down, we're not upset with God, we're not gonna have an all-night wrestling match.

And this is where I was like, well, this feels this feels similar to something else I'm familiar with.

Another place in Scripture where God changes a person.

There's a bleeding woman in Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

And I know you're thinking, like, wait, did this woman wrestle with God?

No, she did not.

She wasn't a wrestler.

But here's the story.

Here's the situation for her.

She'd been bleeding for 12 years.

Jesus, he was given a teaching somewhere at some point in time, and one of the synagogue leaders requested that Jesus stop what he's doing, come to his house, because his daughter had died, and he believed, Jesus, if you just come to my house, you can raise my daughter to life.

And so Jesus, he gets up and he's gonna go and he's gonna raise this dead daughter to life.

And the woman who'd been bleeding, who had been subject to bleeding, we read in Matthew 9, verse 20, for twelve years, she came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.

Matthew 9:20

Have you all heard this story before?

She said to herself, If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.

This is the complete opposite of what we just heard with Jacob.

This woman is, she's not proud, she's not self reliant, she's not deceitful.

If anything, she's socially isolated, she's financially ruined because of years and years and years of medical bills.

She's not proud, she's humiliated, she maybe feels ashamed, she feels like she can't step out into the public.

And she's not ready for a fight.

She doesn't want to be seen, so she's sneaking around, hoping to just blend in with the crowd and just reach out and grab the very edge of his cloak.

She doesn't want to be seen.

She doesn't want to be known.

She doesn't want to have a conversation.

She's just believing if I can reach out and touch what he's wearing, maybe.

Maybe by faith I will be healed.

It's almost like she's exhausted all of her other options.

She's seen all the doctors, she's done all the things, and so she's clinging to the only thing she can at this point.

A man named Jesus that she's heard incredible things about, and she's clinging to this hope that she has in him, ready and trusting like he can heal me somehow if I just reach out and touch the cloak.

And as she did, Jesus turned and saw her.

Your faith has healed you, and the woman was healed at that moment.

And Jesus continued on his way.

Verse 20, 21 and 22.

In the middle of a bigger story.

This is it.

This is what we get in Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

That's it.

A broken woman.

A broken woman.

And don't miss what it said here.

It says, take heart, daughter.

Did you know that this is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus actually speaks to a specific woman and calls her daughter?

That's crazy.

He calls this woman daughter.

This is the only time he calls a specific woman daughter.

And basically, what we can understand is that 12 years of bleeding, 12 years of isolation, 12 years of being like outcast and shunned and pushed to the side, 12 years of not being a part of the community, all of that was undone and removed when he says, take heart, daughter.

He welcomes her back into the community.

He restores her and re-establishes her as somebody of importance and worth.

And man, her future is changed.

This is a moment of transformation.

It's so different than Jacob, though, because this woman came to Jesus broken and needing to be healed.

Jacob came proud, deceitful, and self-reliant.

But in the end, they both experienced God powerfully.

Two drastically different stories with one message.

You don't have to approach God perfectly to encounter him powerfully.

You don't have to approach God perfectly to encounter him powerfully.

So many of us, myself included, think I gotta go to God in a perfect way.

If I'm gonna have this life-transforming moment with God, I gotta do it in the right way.

That's not what we learn here.

What we learn here is that you don't have to approach God perfectly to encounter him powerfully.

So let me ask you this this morning.

Are you the proud, self-reliant, deceitful man or woman?

Or are you more of like the isolated, humiliated, not wanting to be seen type?

You've got something that you're just wishing would go away.

You don't want it to be talked about, you don't want it to be known, and you're just trying to keep it quiet, to not be seen, to live in the shadows, to live with it covered up.

Who are you?

That's what that's what the man, this divine man, maybe God, who Jacob wrestled with, says, Who are you?

Who are you?

Who are you?

For Jacob, answering that question, that moment of honesty led to the blessing.

Honesty always comes before the blessing.

Honesty always comes before the blessing.

The reality is, in a room like this, there's somebody here that's living out a relationship, maybe a marriage or a friendship or some other type of relationship that has had more downs than ups recently.

And maybe you've been too proud, maybe you've been too self-reliant, maybe you've been too deceitful to say, like, hey, we need to get some help.

Maybe you're like, I just I can't be honest and transparent.

I'm unwilling to go there.

And if you're sitting here thinking, like, oh, that's my spouse.

That's totally my spouse.

Yeah, that's not me, that's them.

Like, let me remind you that that maybe you're there as well.

If you're thinking that's my mom or my dad, or you're thinking that's my kid, like maybe it's you.

Maybe it's you.

Somebody here today is is too proud to ask for help, too self-reliant to invite somebody in to say, like, hey, can you help us?

Uh maybe they're too isolated.

Maybe you're just sitting here feeling like, I got this, or I don't want others to know, or we'll work through it.

And this is just my new normal.

I'll be okay.

Maybe you're too humiliated by what it is that's going on, or the conversations you're having.

Maybe you're just like, I don't believe God could heal this thing.

Somebody here is struggling with addiction or a habit or a hangup or a hurt, something that's just, it's been with you for too long.

And you're unwilling to say, I am an addict, I am a cheat, I'm a liar, I'm a gossip.

You fill in the blank.

Who are you?

Because we've all got our things.

We've all got our things that God wants to heal.

God wants to remove.

God wants to restore and redeem.

And those things, the the way we've been does not have to define us any longer.

It does not have to determine our future.

Because in this moment, this moment of brokenness or this moment of pride, this moment of self-reliance, however, we come to God, however it is, not perfectly by any means, this encounter with Him is powerful and can change us and transform us.

And so this morning, I have an invitation for you.

It's an invitation that you've heard time and time again.

If you've been to any church anywhere, I expect that you've heard this invitation.

Come to God just as you are.

Stop delaying.

Stop putting it off.

Stop saying, I've got to get this right, or I've got to get that right, or I've got to fix all of these other peripheral things, or my kids aren't right, or my marriage isn't right.

Don't worry about that stuff because you don't have to approach God perfectly to encounter him powerfully.

This morning, the invitation is simple.

Come to him just as you are.

And it might be painful, it might be uncomfortable, hopefully it doesn't end with an out-of-socket hip, but hopefully it ends with healing and a new name and a new way forward.

Like Jacob and this bleeding woman, these divine encounters, they will change your life forever.

And so imagine with me what your life might look like if you were to approach God just as you are.

Imagine how your life might change, what might look different if you said, you know what?

I'm not gonna worry about being perfect or doing it perfectly.

I'm just gonna come to God in this moment as I am.

Who are you?

Let's close our eyes and let's just get into this moment with God.

You know, I believe that God wants to heal us.

I believe God wants to restore marriages.

I believe God wants to remove the anxious thoughts, the depression that weighs heavy on us.

I believe God wants to shift our attitudes.

He wants our habits that hold us back to be broken, addictions to be removed, families to be restored, burdens eased, in a new way forward for each and every one of us.

And it starts in this moment now.

This moment of broken surrender, where we name honestly who we are.

So that the blessing the blessing God has for us follows.

We don't like to admit it.

We want to appear like we've got it figured out.

But when we examine and reflect on who we really truly are, in these moments of honesty, God, we acknowledge that we are messy.

God, in our mess, in our sinfulness, in our in our brokenness, in our pride, in our self-reliance, in our deceit, in our shame, in our isolation.

However it is we're coming to you this morning, God, no matter how imperfectly we come, God, we trust that in this moment we'll experience you powerfully.

We trust and believe that your power will right the ship, will give us a new way forward, will invite us into a new, fresh life.

The life that's possible because your son came, lived, and died, so that we might be freed.

So that we might be able to experience grace and forgiveness.

God, you know exactly who we are.

You don't ask us to name who we are so that you can get to know us.

You ask us to name who we are so that we have this moment of honesty.

God help us to be honest with you now.

Help us to be honest with you moving forward.

Help us to live different because you're with us.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.

Thank you for listening to today's message.

We hope you had a meaningful moment with Jesus.

You can join us on Sundays at Oak Creek High School at 10 a.m.

for our in person gatherings.

Hope to see you soon.