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Transcript September 7 & 8, 2013

Camouflage: Posing: The Fine Art of Pretending Jake Barker | Genesis 27; Romans 5:6-11

Well, what’s up Traders Point? Welcome to week 2 of our series called Camouflage. In the next few weeks we are going to be talking about those moments in our lives where we have a decision to make. We could maybe do something a little unethical, maybe a little out of our character, that would immediately seem to benefit us, but it is going to require a change in our integrity, a change in our character, and change maybe even in our identity. And we all have a tendency to camouflage ourselves, maybe to fit in or get what we want. So, if you have a Bible or a Bible app, I would love for you to join me in Genesis 27. Genesis is the first book of the Bible so hopefully it’s easy to find. We are going to start at the very beginning of the Bible but at the end we are going to end up with Jesus because that is our favorite thing to do here. We love talking about Jesus, we love singing about Jesus, we love living about Jesus. So we are going to let Jesus be the hero of every single weekend here. I hope you’re ready for that. Genesis 27; find your way there. Before we dive in, let me ask you a question. How many of you, to the best of your knowledge, have a name that is found in the Bible somewhere? Let me see a show of hands – quite a few here. So when you are naming a baby, you don’t want to mess that up. The Bible is a very good source of names. Kind of flip the pages, put your finger down, and walla, the baby’s name. So how many Matt’s do we have here? A couple. It is cool to be named Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector and turned from his shady business of tax collecting to become a devoted follower of Jesus. That is a cool story and a cool name of Matt. How many of you are named Mary? We have a few Mary’s in the house. Mary is a great name; mother of Jesus. At a very young age she showed a great amount of commitment and courage in light of uncertain circumstances. It is very cool to be named Mary. There is Michael like the archangel. That is cool. Or Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, that is a great name. Any Boaz’s in the house? No. Not yet, you wait. Someday, someday that is going to be awesome. Sometimes a Biblical name can be a mixed bag. These people have their ups and downs. Take for instance, my Biblical name which is Jacob. That is who we are going to be hanging out with today. In the end we find out he is the father of ancient Israel and he is a major character in the Bible, but his beginning was very dramatic. Often when we think about people in the Bible, we assume they are perfect. We think they have been scrubbed clean and etched in stained glass forever. But in reality they had problems. They had issues just like you and I, in fact some of the situations they found themselves in put us to shame. That is what we are going to find out with Jacob. Genesis 27 is where we are going to be today. In order to fully understand what plays out in front of us in Genesis 27, allow me to give you some of the background. In Genesis 25 we find out that Jacob had a brother and his name was Esau. Any Esaus in the house? No? It is probably best, it is a weird name. So Esau is Jacob’s twin brother and when he is born he is described as hairy and red. So apparently his mom gave birth to Elmo. That is what we are looking at here. I imagine the midwife said, “Oh, he is beautiful” and kind of handed him to Rebecca.

Camouflage: Posing: The Fine Art of Pretending September 7 & 8, 2013

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2

As we find out now, Jacob and Esau were in the womb and when they were still in Rebecca’s belly she felt like they were fighting. Now imagine this, you have twins in your belly and they are fighting. So she goes to God and says, “What is this about? What is going on here?” God says, “I am glad you asked. In fact there are two nations that are sitting inside your womb now. One day they are going to war against each other and the older will serve the younger.” She was just hoping it was the bad burrito she had the night before, right? She was rooting for indigestion and she got, “your son’s are going to war against each other.” That is the situation they are in. In the literary world, they would refer to that as foreshadowing. So hang on to that piece of information. It is going to come in handy. Jacob and Esau became very different guys. It says Esau was straight out of Duck Dynasty. He had the hair, and he loved to hunt, and he wore the star-‐spangled bandanna. He was a man’s man – Esau. Jacob on the other hand was kind of different. He was kind of domesticated. He could make a killer quiche and he kept up with the Kardacians. That was Jacob. It says that they grew up and they were incredibly different. It doesn’t say one was better than the other, it just says how different they were. At the end of Genesis 25 there is this little line that is really important for us to understand. So often when we’re reading the Bible and we’re readying too fast, we can miss some of these details that will paint the full picture. I find that often we read the Bible as if we are doing it as a school assignment; that we are trying to get our 100 pages in and check it off the box so we get credit. So often if we’re taking that approach we can miss some of the really important things. At the end of Genesis 25 it says that Isaac, the dad, loved Esau and Rebecca, the mom, loved Jacob. So not only were there favorites in the family but it was openly known. That is the situation we are working with. So here is the family that we have and we are going to pick it up in Genesis 27:1-‐4. I would love for you to join me. “When Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, ‘My son’; and he answered, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die.’” Here is what is going on. Isaac is the patriarch of the family and he is the dad. Traditionally what would happen is that before the patriarch would die he would bring in his oldest son and he would bless him. This is kind of lost on us in our modern day understanding but what it meant is that he was setting the trajectory for the rest of his son’s life. When it came to the inheritance, the eldest son would get twice as much inheritance as all of the other sons. There were major perks for being the first born. As you remember Esau was first born by a millisecond. In fact when they were born it says that Jacob was “holding onto” Esau’s heel when they came out of the womb. Sibling rivalry started early and it was fast. So what was happening here for Esau was this was going to be a very lucrative deal. Earlier in the Bible we found out that Isaac was rich. I am talking like “Oprah rich”. That is Isaac. It says he was in a neighborhood and he got so rich that his neighbors asked him to leave. That is “Oprah rich”. When your neighbors are kicking you out, you know you are loaded. So Esau, now his time had come for him. He was the eldest and he was going to receive the blessing. He was going to get this massive inheritance. So I imagine he whistled with his quiver and bow as he went out to the field to hunt the game to finally receive what was coming to him. And then we read this in Genesis 27:5, “Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, ‘I heard your



father speak to your brother Esau, “Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food that I may eat it an d bless you before the Lord before I die.”’” I want you to hang on to those three words “before the Lord”. “’Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. And you shall bring it to your father to eat so that he may bless you before he dies.’ But Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, ‘Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing.’ His mother said to him, ‘Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my voice and go, bring them to me.’” Does anyone else notice some major marital issues right here? This is not great. I can’t imagine that on their honeymoon Rebekah looked into Isaac’s eyes and said, “Hey on your death bed I am going to stab you in your back. This is going to be beautiful.” This was never the plan. This is just way their relationship evolved. It says, “Rebekah was listening” to Isaac and Esau. This was no accidental overhearing. This was eavesdropping. Do you notice how she refers to Isaac and Esau as she was talking to Jacob? She says, “Your father” and “Your brother”. It seems like a lack of affection. It reminds me when I come home from a long day and Trudy informs me and she says, “Your daughter spilled glitter over the carpet and your son has a poopy diaper.” I say, “My half of the DNA was responsible for all of that behavior?” That is kind of how all that happens. Now I know if it gets to “your kids” territory that mom needs a break and she deserves it. That is what is going on here with Rebekah. She says your father and your brother and I don’t have much to do with them. As she is telling Jacob about Isaac’s plans, she inserts those three words “before the Lord”. Isaac never said that but Rebekah does for some reason. Now why? Now it is possible that she misremembered what Isaac said, or maybe she was using some creative liberties, but it’s entirely possible that she was using God’s name to add a sense of urgency to the situation. That in fact she was using God’s name to get what she wanted. I know that you probably have never done that but you might have seen other people do that; use God’s name to get what they want. “Now I can tell God really would want me to do this so I am going to go ahead and do it.” “I can tell that God would really want me to have that, He wants me to be happy, so I am going to go ahead and get that.” If you grew up in church and you were in a youth group and you ended up in a dating situation you may have even heard this line, “I think God is telling us to break up. And I also think God is conveniently telling me I need to date the new girl from Ohio. I am just going to go ahead and do God’s will. You can’t argue with God’s will so, see ya.” That is kind of the way that works. So often we use God’s name to get what we want. We hijack God’s name to justify our selfish desires. I have to propose to you, if God’s will conveniently lines up with our selfish desires we may need to check our interpretation skills. It’s possible that we are using God to really just get what we want. If, in order to accomplish God’s will, you have to sin in the process that was never God’s will. So Rebekah comes to Jacob and she says here is how this is going to go down. I am going to dress you up like Esau. You are going to get your Elmo costume on. You are going to look like Esau and then you are going to smell like him and you are going to bring Isaac food. Jacob didn’t really argue with her and he didn’t really put up a fight. In fact, the only thing that Jacob says is, “What if I get caught?” He never said, “Hey mom, that is a really mean thing to do to dad.” No, he said, “What if I get busted? This is going to be really bad for me.”



Where it seems that Isaac and Esau converse, Rebekah commanded Jacob. She said, “Just listen to my voice.” Hers is a pretty dangerous voice. So Rebekah lays out the plan. She says here is how it’s going to go down. She dresses Jacob to look like Esau and to feel like Esau and she gives him the food. Then Jacob enters Isaac’s room and this is how it happens in Genesis 27: 18 “so he went in to his father and said, ‘My father.’ And he said, ‘Here I am. Who are you, my son?’ Jacob said to his father, ‘I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me.’ But Isaac said to his son, ‘How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?’ He answered, ‘Because the Lord your God granted me success.’ Then Isaac said to Jacob, ‘Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.’ So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, who felt him and said, ‘The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.’ And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands. So he blessed him. He said, ‘Are you really my son Esau?’ He answered, ‘I am.’ So Jacob goes into his dying dad. His senses are failing and he can’t really tell who is in front of him and he just lies. He lies his face off when Isaac says, “Wow, that was really quick – how did you get that food so fast? We really don’t have microwaves yet so I am not totally sure how you whipped that up.” What did he say? He said, “Well, God gave it to me.” Much like his mom, he uses God’s name to get what she wanted. Jacob lies three different times to his dad. He had every opportunity to drop the act. Isaac gave him multiple shots to come clean and he didn’t take a single one of them. I have to ask you the question, “Have you been there or are you there?” See there was like the first lie and it didn’t seem like such a big deal – it was just a momentary thing where I told maybe a half lie. Then there was the second lie to cover up the first lie, then the third, fourth, and fifth. For so long we have been lying it’s almost difficult for us to tell what is true or not. In fact we have become so good at this that we start believing what we are saying. So maybe you are telling your friends that the guy you are dating is a really good guy. We are going to be married someday and it is going to be great. But deep down inside you know it is going nowhere. Not only is he not leading you towards Jesus, he is probably leading you away from Jesus. But in your fear of being alone you keep on posing. Maybe you keep telling your family that financially everything is going to be ok. Don’t worry about it. The markets just have to turn a little bit. I just have to catch one break and it will all be ok. You can keep buying what you want and don’t worry about college. I have it all. Deep down inside the bills keep coming and you aren’t sure how you are going to pay for them. In your fear of letting them down, you keep on posing. Maybe you come in here every week. You sing the songs, you volunteer, and you take meticulous sermon notes. But deep down inside you aren’t sure if you buy all this. You’re really wrestling with this whole Jesus thing and Him being Lord of your life. But you’re not sure if you are allowed to ask those kinds of questions in church. So you just keep on posing. The reason that we pose and the reason that we pretend and the reason we keep up the act is that we have been taught for a very long time that it is entirely dangerous to come clean. We have been taught through our culture and through our relationships that if you truly expose who you are, you are opening yourself up to dangerous territory.



Think about it like this. We love for our public figures to be authentic, don’t we? We want our politicians and our celebrities and our athletes to be real. We don’t want them to give us the plastic answers and just be this robot for fame. We want them to be authentic, really open themselves up to us. What happens the moment that one of them says something just slightly real? We tear them apart. We eat them up and spit them out. They are all over our gossip magazines and they dominate our coffee shop conversations. All along the way we are teaching each other that if you are ever to truly come clean, you would not be accepted. If you were to really expose all the junk that is going on in your life, all the doubt you have, all the insecurity that is wrestling in your heart, people wouldn’t accept that. So we keep on posing. So, if that is you right now and you have this act you are trying to keep up, you may be fooling some people around you. I get it. I get why you would do that. I get why sometimes it’s just easier to act our way through life than to be truly authentic. I think as we watch what happens between Jacob and his family, Jacob and the people around him, we have to consider that posing might be far more dangerous. So Jacob has just gone into Isaac’s room and he lied to him three different times. He stole from his brother what was rightfully his. He quietly exits Isaac’s room. Once you have made a fool of your dad and robbed your brother, I am not sure there is much else to say. The Bible says in Genesis 27:20, “As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting.” It didn’t take Esau long to realize what had happened. Esau had been robbed and Isaac had been fooled and now they are beside themselves. Esau begs his dad to reverse it. He says take it back and give it to me. But Isaac says that is not the way it works. The blessing is a one-‐time thing. Jacob has it and it is over. Watch how Esau responds in verse 41, “Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.’ But the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him, ‘Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away-‐until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?’” So Esau plans on killing Jacob. Remember Esau slept on a pillow made of guns. He was a violent dude. This was not a threat, this was a promise. He was going to kill his brother. Then Rebekah in her opportunistic way catches wind of the plan and sends Jacob running. She says just take a long weekend. Esau will get over it and then you will come back and we will be a happy family again, which to me seems a little simplistic. Just give it a few days. He will cool off and everything will be ok. At this point I think we need to pause and fully consider the ramifications of what Jacob has done and how our posing can affect our life. Number one is this – Posing keeps us from God. Did you notice the absence of a major character in the Bible that should have been part of this story but wasn’t? It was God. He had no role to play. In fact, the only time His name is mentioned was when someone was using Him to get what they wanted. Not once did Rebekah pause and say, “Hey God, is this the wise thing to do or have you got this taken care of?”



Not once did Jacob pause and say, “God, give me the courage to stand up against my mom.” No, they just used God to get what they wanted. So often our posing or our sin can keep us from God. That is what posing does – posing reveals a lack of trust in God. You see, when Rebekah and Jacob were hijacking the blessing they were basically saying, “God, we don’t trust you to take care of us. We are going to take care of that ourselves.” So often you and I do the same thing. We hijack our day-‐to-‐day from God thinking we have a better plan. In this really weird way we say, “Hey God, I can trust you with my salvation but I don’t trust you with my career path. I trust you to take care of eternity, but I don’t trust you to take care of my sex life. God I trust you that you created the world but when it comes to my friends at school I am going to take that one.” It reveals this major lack of trust in God. So often we have people come and they will ask this question, “Why can’t I feel God?” Maybe you have asked that question yourself. I just can’t feel Him. I can’t see Him. I am trying to do all the right things. I plugged all the numbers in the formula. I am supposed to be feeling God but I can’t. You have to consider for a moment that it could very well be the sin in our lives that keeps us from feeling God. It is that unrepentant sin. It is that sin that we are not willing to deal with, we are not willing to own, we are not willing to lay down at the cross. We are not willing to do that so sin acts as a veil so we cannot see God. It acts as a deafening device where we can’t hear Him. It acts as a numbing mechanism where we can’t feel His presence. So Jacob’s sin directly got in the way between him and God. The next one is – Posing keeps us from others. Have you ever tried to have a relationship with someone who was really fake? They just pretended their whole way through life. You would see them in different social situations and you could see that they would completely change who they were to fit in. They would change their vocabulary. They would change their values. They would change their entire character depending on who they were surrounded by. How is it possible have a relationship with someone like that? That is what posing does. It keeps us from authentic relationships. Look what happened between Jacob and his family. Jacob made a fool of his dad. His brother now wants to kill him and now he is on the run from the one person who ever loved him, his mom. See Rebekah thought it was just going to be this long weekend until everything cooled off. We find out later that it is 20 years that he was gone. You see it is those little acts, that little act of camouflage that we think is just going to be this little blip, that has this huge ripple effect over our entire lives. Was it worth it for Jacob? Was it worth it for him to live separate from his family for that long? Posing keeps us from others. The final thing is this – Posing keeps others from God. You see, what Jacob did here in this betrayal is that he led Esau to sin. Esau’s murderous threat was sin. His wanting to kill his brother was sin. It was certainly Esau’s decision as to how he wanted to react to Jacob. Jacob led him to that line. Think about it like this. There is one kind of “go to” defense mechanism when we invite people to church. This is kind of their “go to” deflection. It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s 100% – it works every time. They will say something like this, “I don’t want to go to church because it is full of hypocrites.” You have heard it and maybe even have said it yourself. Sometimes it can be a smokescreen for something that is going on, something that is inside and they are not willing to let God into their world. I think we have to consider for the moment that they might have a point. Why would anyone want to be a part of something where they say this and they do that? They say they love Jesus but they store hate in their heart. They say they love Jesus but they are incredibly stingy. They say they love Jesus but they



objectify women with their jokes and their comments. I don’t want to be a part of a place like that. They are pretty accurate in their description of us. In the weirdest way possible this does make a lot of sense. The Bible should give us full permission to be truly authentic. In fact, authenticity should be the trademark of every single Christian and here is why. The Bible cleans our clock on perfection. It says that none of us can pull that off; that every single one of us has fallen short of God’s standards. So we are all sinners in need of a Savior. So it is truly impossible for us to be arrogant and in need of a Savior at the same time. That doesn’t make any sense. How can you be drowning and judging the people around you. It just doesn’t work. Arrogance and Christianity should be an oxymoron, but so often we find them together. So the Bible has given you full permission to say, “I am a work in progress, in fact I am a mess and I am needing Jesus right now.” It is this word called sanctification. It is the process where Jesus smoothes out some of the rough edges so we become more like Him. We should all be really able to admit, “I am not perfect, I do not have all the answers, I am a work in progress.” The danger comes in when we assume any other position than a sinner in need of a Savior. When I assume the role of judge, I assume the role of the perfect person sitting down and knocking people off. That is entirely dangerous. So we have to ask ourselves, is our posing keeping people from Jesus? In fact posing may be far more dangerous than we think. At this point we have a family that is fractured. They are fractured because they have favorites. They are fractured because they lied and they stole from each other. Like I said, we find out they had been 20 years without each other. So I want to fast-‐forward those 20 years and get over to Genesis 32. Flip over there with me. Now what has happened so far is that there have been 20 years since the betrayal and all of the sudden Jacob catches wind that Esau wants to meet up. Now imagine this. You have betrayed someone 20 years ago and you get an email that they want to get together for coffee. What would be going through your head? Well Jacob thought, “Esau is going to kill me. He is going to make good on his promise. I know 20 years but there is no statute of limitations apparently. He is going to get after me and I am dead.” He was terrified. So he goes into survival mode. Jacob takes his family and he splits it in two so it would be more difficult to kill them all at once. Then he places himself firmly behind the rest of his family. So if you are keeping score at home, Jacob just put himself behind the women and the children. This is not his “Braveheart” moment. He is a coward. He is terrified. The last thing he does is he sends this massive amount of livestock over to Esau. He is hoping to pay him off. One last attempt of escape, Jacob tries to sneak off at night. There is this moment where he is all alone, and it is at a river bank, and it is at night. This had to be Jacob’s deepest and darkest moment. His brother is about to come for him. He can’t protect his family. The betrayal he thought was going to be so valuable has now bitten him in the butt. He is all by himself with only his thoughts. Then something truly amazing happens. We are going to read it in Genesis 32:24. Jacob finds himself in a wrestling match. Watch this. “And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day has broken.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ And he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then he said, ‘Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you



have striven with God and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him.” So, in the middle of the night, in his deepest and darkest moment, he finds himself in a wrestling match with an angel of God. Now while Jacob has seemed to be pretty domesticated and has watched a ton of reality TV, apparently he was a really good wrestler. He locked this guy up all night long. They were going at it. In fact the angel had to dislocate Jacob’s hip just to win the battle. It seems a little cheating to me but I guess if you are an angel you can do those things. So Jacob is wrestling with an angel of God and says, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” Now why would Jacob seek God’s blessing at this moment? It may seem like a holy thing or a commendable or righteous thing to do. If you ask me I think he was looking at every advantage he could get over his brother. He had already stolen his dad’s blessing. Now he wanted God’s blessing because he genuinely thought he was about to die and was looking for every advantage he could find. Now this may seem like a weird encounter. Let me ask you this. Have you ever felt like you were wrestling with God? That there was something in your world and it didn’t make sense so you wrestled. It may have started out as kind of a cordial back and forth but then it developed into an all out brawl with God. It seemed like God might be asking you to change a little bit and you weren’t ready for that, so you wrestled with that. It seems like when I read the Bible it says some different things than what our culture believes, so I wrestle. It seems as if God may want me to love my spouse in a very different way than I feel right now, so I wrestle. She got sick and I don’t understand why, so I wrestle. In our lives, when those unforeseen circumstances enter into our world, we can often find ourselves wrestling with God. We may get mad at Him. We may say things to Him. We may cuss God out because we are so frustrated that we can’t fully comprehend everything in our world. Here’s what is important to understand about this whole seen. God will wrestle with us at night but He will bring us into the light. God was not above meeting Jacob at the riverbank in the middle of the night. God answered Jacob in his deepest and darkest moment, when he was most alone. That is when God showed up. So that means that God will meet us in our depression. God will meet us in our addiction. God will meet us on the verge of divorce. God is not above meeting your right where you are with all of the junk, all of the doubt, all of the mess that surrounds you. God will meet you there. It is important to understand that He won’t leave you there. So often we think the dark is our friend. We can hide in the dark. We can pretend in the dark. We can be whoever we think we want to be in the dark. The dark is not a place for long-‐term reservations. Nothing grows in the dark. Nothing stays healthy in the dark. That is what the light is for. So while God will meet us in our deepest, darkest scary moment at night, He is going to bring us into the light and that is what happens here. As soon as the angel and Jacob were done wrestling, day breaks and there is Esau. Esau and his 400 men were coming at Jacob and he is still terrified. Jacob, his family, and his servants all bowed down seven times in front of Esau. They are just throwing themselves on his mercy, hoping for something good to happen. Then something amazing happens. Genesis 33:4 “But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” Can any of you explain that to me? If I had 20 years to sit and stew on it, if I had 20 years to sit back and determine how I was going to get my revenge, I would have been angry. I would have been



violent. I would have looked for some vigilante justice against my brother. What does Esau do? He runs to him and hugs him and forgives him. The only explanation I can possibly come up with is this. Not only was God working on Jacob, He was working on Esau too. Time doesn’t heal wounds. God heals wounds. So often we think that, for the hurts in our lives, if we just give it enough time, if we can get enough separation, and if enough time can go by I can finally feel it is dulled in my life. Maybe it is not the first thing I think of when I wake up, it is just the second. Every time I see that person I am not fully enraged anymore. Time will take care of that. That is just not true. God is the only one who heals the wounds. It is through divine intervention that Esau forgave Jacob. Now, in the literary world, they would refer to Jacob and Esau as foreshadowing for a very different event that would come later. See there is a very different relationship described in the Bible and we are a part of it. It says when sin enters our lives there is a great separation between us and God. That relationship is severed and there is nothing we can do to cross that gap. There is no good we can do and there is no sacrifice we can make. There is nothing we can do to get back in right standing with God. But, in an amazing way, Jesus forgave us before we ever apologized. Did you notice that? Jacob couldn’t even say anything before Esau got there and Esau forgave him. His forgiveness came before the apology. The same is true of us and Jesus. Here is how it is described in Romans 5:6-‐11 “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”Paul is writing there and he is saying, “He forgave you before you ever apologized.” It is through divine intervention that we are right with God. Now there are three things we want to understand about reconciliation as we wrap up today. Number one is this – Reconciliation with Jesus precedes reconciliation with others. Reconciliation with Jesus comes before we can reconcile with others. So often we want to skip that step. We would love to just fix the things around us – fix our immediate problems, fix our relationship with our co-‐worker, our friend, our family. But first we must get right with God. Did you notice the series of events that happened in Jacob’s life? First he was humbled before God. Then he was humbled before his brother. Now Jesus was saying through that passage in Romans, “I did it for you.” Reconciliation is free, reconciliation is available, and reconciliation is available by the truckload. It is just going to require you to humble yourself. So if you are wrestling with this and you know there are relationships that need to be mended in your life, the very first step is to reconcile with Jesus. He may be able to point out the sin in our lives that caused the situation in the first place. He may be able to smooth out some of those rough edges that are keeping that relationship from being healed. So, first we reconcile to Jesus and then we reconcile to others. The second thing to understand is this – Reconciliation with Jesus empowers reconciliation with others. Right now you may be arguing with me because you think you have hurt someone and you know there is absolutely no way they would ever forgive you. The hurt was too deep, it was too long ago, you never talk anymore. So you are already saying, “No.” You have ruled out any opportunity for



reconciliation in your life. Let me propose this; that if Esau could forgive Jacob and if Jesus can forgive sinners, then you can be forgiven. You do not get to say no for that other person. God is calling us to reconciliation. In 2 Corinthians it describes us as “ministers of reconciliation”. Reconciliation is God’s business. It is through the power of what Jesus did for us that we can experience that with people around us. The final thing is this – Humility precedes reconciliation. Humility is an absolute prerequisite for reconciliation. If we approach a person that we hurt with our list of excuses or maybe even a very well reasoned excuse as to why we did what we did, “It really wasn’t all that bad. I don’t think you should really be as angry as you really are,” that is not going to do anything. When we seek out reconciliation we are saying words like, “Sorry, I was wrong.” You see, it is once we humble ourselves before Jesus that we are able to humble ourselves before others and reconciliation is possible. Right now we are going to do this thing called Communion. Communion is our weekly opportunity to remember the reconciliation between us and Jesus. We eat the bread that represents His body and the juice that represents His blood. It reminds us of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us so that we could be in right standing with God again – the ultimate sacrifice that it took that we couldn’t do ourselves. So now we can be good with God. Here is what I am asking. If right now, in the moment you know you need to be forgiven, that you betrayed, you lied, and that your posing got you in such a deep mess that you don’t know if you can get out of it, you are ready to take that first step of humility towards Him. We don’t want you to wait. We don’t want you to wait a week, a day, or a minute. Here is what will happen. If you wait and you press pause on what you know you need to do, you are going to talk yourself out of it. You are going to reason with yourself and say there is no way I can be forgiven. There is no way that they would let go. There is no way they would even talk to me. You would talk yourself out of what God is going in your world so do not wait. During Communion there will be people over here by the Baptistery or over here by the Cross and they would love to pray with you. They would love to take that first step with you so that you could humble yourself before Jesus. The hope of reconciliation is found in what Jesus did for us. It is possible, so do not say no for them. Come clean today. I would like to pray for you. I would like to pray for the courage to take that first step, and I would like to pray for that hope of reconciliation in your world. God we are unbelievably overwhelmed by Your grace. We understand that forgiveness comes through You, that is the only reason that we have hope for reconciliation and the only reason any of this is possible. So we humbly lay ourselves in front of You. You know the junk and You know what we have done. You are the one who can forgive us. You are the one who can help us be forgiven by others. We love You. We thank You. It is in Your name I pray. Amen.

camouflage: posing: the fine art of pretending…intellectualmaterialsarethepropertyo...

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