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Three Angels Fellowship SDA Church

Wrestling with God

Garhett Morgan

01 Wrestling with God

02 Wrestling with God

03 Wrestling with God

You love us, we know, but Father, we sometimes struggle loving You, and we often struggle loving each other.

Father, may Your words speak to us this morning, and may we understand Your message for us, not mine because my opinion's a dime or dozen, but Yours is what matters.

Go with me to Matthew chapter 10, if you would.

Matthew chapter 10, these are some very uncomfortable words of Jesus.

Doesn't really sound like Jesus, but those words are written in red.

Matthew 10, and we'll start here just for context sake at verse 33.

Matthew 10, verse 33 says this, "'But Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.

Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth." Pause.

Isn't the name of Jesus the Prince of Peace?

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth.

Verse 35, For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." That one's a little more believable, right?

"'And a man's foes shall be of all his own household.

For he that loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

And he that loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And he that taketh not his cross and follows after me is not worthy of me.

And to close, he that finds his life shall lose it.

And he that looses his father for my sake will find it.

Hard words from Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the 1 that loves the children, the 1 that promotes the family circle, The 1 that was there when Adam and Eve met, and Adam said, wow, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

The 1 that said, be fruitful and multiply.

The 1 that was rejoicing today when we dedicated baby Ethan.

These are all things that Jesus loves and promotes.

And now in these few verses, he says, I have come to make war.

Father against son, son against father, brother against brother.

This is something that Jacob and Esau understood very well.

Last week, just a little bit of review in case you weren't here, we've been looking at the story of Jacob and Esau.

And ever since the birth of Jacob, the heel grabber, his name translates to, and also deceiver, Jacob was living in his brother's shadow.

He was the 1 that was his father's favorite.

He was gonna get a special blessing, and Jacob had to have it.

In fact, God had told him he would have it, right?

So it's kind of hard to blame him, except he did not want to wait for God, and so he went out to get these things for himself in his plan.

He deceived, of course, his brother Esau in selling his birthright for a bowl of lentils.

And last week, we took a look at probably 1 of the most sad stories in the Bible, when Jacob goes before his father and dresses in skins of animals to be hairy like his brother so that his blind father would not know who it was.

And he goes to his father and said, Father, give me the oldest son's blessing.

And the father said, Are you really Esau?

His father said, ah, your arms feel like Esau's, but your voice sounds like Jacob's.

How is it that you could have found the meats in the woods so quickly, and Jacob lies on the name of God and says, God was with me and brought the deer right to where I was." Isaac, the father, thinking that it was Esau, gave him the oldest blessing.

And we don't know exactly how long, a few hours or likely a few days later, the oldest son Esau comes in from the field having gotten the meat, killed the meat, dressed the meat, cooked the meat, brought it into his father as was his wish and said, Dad, here is what you've asked for, give me my blessing.

Last week's message was not an easy 1 to hear.

The point of last week's message was in your Christian experience you might fool everyone.

Yes, you might fool your wife into thinking that you are a good Christian.

You might fool your pastor into thinking that you indeed are a good Christian.

You might fool your sons and your daughters into thinking that you are a good Christian.

You might even fool yourself into thinking that you indeed are a good Christian, but you cannot fool God.

You can fool everyone else, but unlike Isaac who was blinded, God is surely not blind.

God sees past the fakeness of us as Christians, and yes, often even as Seventh-day Adventist Christians.

You wonder when Jesus said, a sheep in wolf's clothing, if he had Jacob and Esau in mind.

Now Jacob, causing all of this family trauma, is told by his mother and his father, your brother is going to kill you.

Jacob, the 1 that has gotten the birthright and has gotten the blessing, runs away never to see his aged father again, never to see his mother again, without his birthright that he had bought, without any money and just the clothes on his back.

He runs away in shame and without a family name.

By the way, he sees Esau again, and that's going to cause him some very sleepless nights.

He lays down there at night completely shamed and penniless and without any family.

And as he's laying there in the wilderness, God comes to him and says, Jacob, I'm still with you.

Jacob is encouraged and he travels for about, scholars say, probably about another month to get to the place that his father had told him to go, Go and be with some distant family.

And after that long journey, Jacob finds himself in the fields with the shepherds.

And that's where we find our story in Genesis chapter 29, if you'd like to turn there.

We're going to read a fair chunk of this narrative because I hope that you will see something very important that will have to do with our first verses, the hard verses of Jesus today.

Then Jacob went on his journey of about a month, we think, and came into the land of the people of the east.

And he looked and behold, a well in the field.

There were 3 flocks of sheep lying by it.

For out of that well they watered the flocks and a great stone was upon the well's mouth." So this is interesting.

So in this area, scholars tell us that they would have these big open wells and they always covered it up with a gigantic stone, Very similar to covering up a tomb, right, where they'd roll a stone on and off.

They would roll a stone on top of the well for a few different reasons.

Number 1, they didn't want a wild animal to fall into it and then die and then rot, and then all of the water would be no good anymore.

But secondly, water was very important and it was very scarce.

And so they covered it up with a big stone because they didn't want just anyone to come and grab it and leave.

We don't have time to get into the whole story today, but they water their sheep, they see Jacob coming, they cover it up, he talks with them, and he says, hey, do you know Laban?

And By the way, here comes Laban's daughter with the rest of his sheep, which is very unusual.

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Series

Wrestling with God

03 Wrestling with God

Transcript

Parent Series

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