[00:00:00] Welcome to Gracious Words. Gracious Words is taken from the Weekly Women's Bible Study,
[00:00:15] taught by Cheryl Brodersen at Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California.
[00:00:37] This program will continue our look at the life of Jacob. It may seem that his life is falling apart as circumstances turn against him, but God is actually bringing Jacob to a place of greater dependence on him.
[00:01:07] And now here is part 3 of Cheryl's message titled, The Way Forward.
[00:01:37] It is one of the largest tributaries of the Jordan River. It is 50 miles north of the Dead Sea. It is one of the fullest places of the Jordan River, and it actually means luxuriant river.
[00:01:50] But once Jacob crosses the J-Bock with all of his family, with all of his servants, all of his livestock, it is going to make escape more difficult and nearly impossible.
[00:02:05] Jacob prepares an appeasement gift for his brother very quickly. Think about it, Jacob who is keen to get the best from himself from Laban is now willing to give the best away for peace.
[00:02:16] 200 female goats, 20 male goats, 20 ewes, 20 rams, 30 camels. You know I like the camels. 40 cows, 10 bulls, 20 donkeys, 10 bulls.
[00:02:28] He instructs his servant to put some space between each of the groups, like make it look really impressive. Make it look like such a... and there's more. Not only the ronko knives, but there's more.
[00:02:41] You answer this deal now and we will throw in 30 camels. It's an unbelievable deal.
[00:02:49] Jacob sends his family, his livestock, his servants to the west side of the J-Bock. Then he finds a place where he is all alone, has no one with him, nothing beside him.
[00:03:03] It is reminiscent of his time in Bethel when he had a rock for a pillow and he was all alone. And this time rather than a dream, there is a man but not just any man that comes and wrestles with him all night long and what a night.
[00:03:18] Here is a night when Jacob needs to sleep. Ever have one of those nights where you really need your sleep? Maybe you're meeting with the IRS tomorrow and you need your sleep because you need to think through and you need your wits about you.
[00:03:29] But because of the anxiety and everything, but now he is not just... you know, he is not just losing sleep. He's going to be wrestling.
[00:03:44] Now think about this. Jacob had always leaned into his ingenuity. That had been the thing that got him out of trouble. It was his ingenuity.
[00:03:57] But he spends the whole night awake, exerting all his strength. Wrestling is an exhausting sport. I haven't done it, but I've talked to those who do.
[00:04:09] It is personal. It is physical. It is up close. And Jacob is tenacious. He will not let go or let up. And the man who wrestles him has to touch his hip and he puts it out of joint.
[00:04:26] And it is only when Jacob is in immense pain that yet he will not let go of his hold. He will not let go of this man. He will not let him go no matter what.
[00:04:38] And as the sun begins to rise, the man orders Jacob to release him. But Jacob is sensing that something is divine about this one that he is wrestling with refuses and says no, not without a blessing.
[00:04:56] You see, Jacob now knows that his only hope of survival, his only hope of the promises of God is by way of blessing, divine blessing. That's the only way for it is by divine blessing.
[00:05:13] His ingenuity now won't do it. He's exhausted. He has no strength because he's been wrestling all night and now he can't run away. He can't escape. He needs a blessing.
[00:05:27] God must reduce Jacob to faith alone and take away the props because it is faith and faith alone that will bring us into the promises of God. It is not our good works. We do not enter into the promises by our own ingenuity or because we've earned them by just a perfect life
[00:05:48] and always obeying the law and never ever going through a yellow light that turns red at an intersection. No, none of us has ever done that. Never. That's not how we earn the promises of God.
[00:06:01] And Jacob is being reduced to faith. You know there are times that God will take away every prop. He will close every other door so that it might be by faith and faith alone because faith is the only way into the promises of God.
[00:06:16] It is by believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Messiah who died on the cross and rose again. That brings us into the promises of God. No other way. No other way. But God will reduce us. So that's it. Like all I've got is Jesus.
[00:06:31] What's your promise? Jesus. Here I am. All I've got is Jesus. What's your promise? Jesus. What's your hope? Jesus. Where's your key? Jesus. That's all. That's all we've got. But you know what? If we have Jesus, we have everything. We have all we need.
[00:06:50] What is the sound of one hand clapping?
[00:06:55] You might think, what is going on here? What is going on here? I told you my son, Charles. What's going on here? What's going on here?
[00:07:05] You might be sometimes when you come to these places in the Bible, what's going on here? What's going on here? You know it's good to ask yourself, what's going on here?
[00:07:13] Because God has an answer. There is something going on here. You know, my oldest son said what's going on here? What's going on here? My youngest son, we are having a choir practice at our church. It was before we moved to England.
[00:07:26] And he's up at the front door and he comes back. You know, I'm sitting in the back and he comes back and he goes, something's going on on that front row.
[00:07:33] And I said, Braden, will you just go back? You're part of this choir. You know, you can sing so go back. So he goes back and he turns around.
[00:07:42] And I'm like, so you know, pretty soon he gets up and I could see these other parents just glaring at me like what is going on with your son?
[00:07:52] He comes all the way back down the aisle. Something's going on in that front row. Something's going on in that front row. Braden, go back. Go back. Just go back. Be quiet and everything.
[00:08:01] So pretty soon the choir director goes, oh my goodness there are two kids just fighting it out up here. And Braden turns around and he stands on the seat goes...
[00:08:11] And then he gets up. I told you something's going on on that front row. Let me tell you when you get to the Bible and you find things and you say what's going on here? Something's going on on that front row.
[00:08:23] God is up to something. And this again is what God's up to. Why? Why did God, why did, why the disjointed hip? It was because again God was bringing Jacob to faith in him alone.
[00:08:39] Making his dependency on him alone so he could bless him. So he could work for him.
[00:08:47] Jacob asks for the blessing. I'm not letting you go for a blessing and what is the blessing? What do you think the blessing is that Jacob expected? I thought about this. What is the blessing? Lord, did he expect the angels all of a sudden to be real going, it's alright we're here. Where are you?
[00:09:04] Where is Issa? Did he expect them to become visible to Issa? Wouldn't that have been so fun? Sometimes the things that we pray like God show my company of angels with weapons.
[00:09:16] We're just like, we've got these things that we pray or maybe like Lord make Issa nice. Like make his teeth fall out like, hey Jacob how are you?
[00:09:25] We can, Issa. These guys we all came together. Take away their thunder. Who knows what he was praying? Who knows? Or what he expected was the blessing?
[00:09:39] You know Issa was here one moment with 400 guys and they got sick so they all had to turn back. You expect you don't know what it is. But what was he hoping would be the blessing?
[00:09:55] What was he hoping? Do you think he was hoping that it would be a name change? I'm going to change your name. Here's the blessing. You're like no, no, no, no.
[00:10:04] Thank you very much. No, I said blessing. B-L-E-S-S-I-N-G. Blessing. You know big stuff. You know like angels come down. Issa falls off his horse. He's like army crawling.
[00:10:23] You know he doesn't know what happened to his sword. He goes blind. I've heard you do these kind of things. Blessing. Right. Your name will not be Jacob. It will be Israel. Does that sound like a blessing? Is that the blessing you expected, Lord?
[00:10:41] This is what God's saying. I'm not going to change Issa. I'm going to change you. Wow! That's a blessing. God's saying Issa might never change, but Jacob, you're going to change. Here's the blessing.
[00:10:57] You're not going to be known anymore. Your identity is not going to be supplanter. Your identity is not going to be deceiver. That is no longer what you're going to be known for, what you're going to be known by, or who you are.
[00:11:14] No. Your name is going to be ruled by God. This is the difference. This is the change. This is the blessing. The blessing comes when we are no longer trying to get by in life, by our ingenuity, by our wits, by hurting others, by deceit.
[00:11:35] But we are going to go forward in life by being ruled by God. That God's going to be the directive. God's going to be the means.
[00:11:45] God is taking, you know a name means it's so significant in that Eastern culture. A name is a reputation, a name is a testimony.
[00:11:59] Years ago, when my oldest daughter, Kristen, was having her baby, we bought a crib and I bought it at the same place that I said, Kristen, please.
[00:12:08] I bought, your dad and I bought the crib for you at this place. I want to buy you a crib. Let's go. And she picked out her favorite crib at this place.
[00:12:16] And we bought the crib. And it was in a box. We decided not to open it until it was, you know, because I bought it for her when she was, I don't know, like eight weeks along.
[00:12:25] And just a promise. And we kept it in the box. And then it came time for the baby. And so she's eight months along and we open up the box. It's the wrong crib.
[00:12:35] It's the wrong crib. So we take her husband takes it back, he's got the receipt and they said, no, we won't do it. It's your fault. You should have opened the box and you should have checked.
[00:12:44] And so then she's like, can you believe it? So she calls and she's crying. Like, no, this is not, it doesn't work. We're having a boy, you know, and they're like, we don't care.
[00:12:56] So she's like, mom, so, you know, mom to the rescue. I'm like, how dare you? I'm calling in the leaves. Like, no, no, no, I mean, super rude.
[00:13:04] So we tell Brian, Brian's like, I'll take care of it. You'll take care. I'll take care of it. He puts the crib in the back of the car. He drives down there.
[00:13:14] He asked for the manager. Now, Michael tried the same thing. Brian goes and he says, I want to talk to her and he says to the manager, I want to tell you a story.
[00:13:22] When our first daughter would when my wife was pregnant, we came here and we bought our crib because this is a reputable place because you have a name.
[00:13:29] You have a name that is reputable and when our daughter was having her first baby, there was no other place that we thought of for a crib but this place because this is where we bought our crib.
[00:13:40] And he said, I'm going to tell you why you're going to give us our money back or give us a new crib because of your name, because of the name you represent, because of the reputation of this place.
[00:13:50] You are going to give us the right crib. And the lady said, okay, I'm going to give you the right crib. Brian comes home. I got a refund.
[00:14:02] We're like, how? You guys kiss. I told them you're going to do this for your name because a name is a reputation. A name is a testimony.
[00:14:14] You have to build a name. You have to build trust. A name is a testimony.
[00:14:25] So Jacob's name is going to be ruled by God. It's going to be, God did it. The name God is putting himself in Jacob's name.
[00:14:34] El is God. Is El. El. God is inserting himself in Jacob's life and his name.
[00:14:44] God is taking authority over Jacob. Jacob had climbed up the ladder of success by extortion, deceit, escape, supplanting, by his own ingenuity and stealthily sneaking away.
[00:14:59] Jacob had made a name for himself and it amounted to deception, supplanter. He had supplanted his brother, deceived his brother, deceived his own father, supplanted Laban, deceived Laban.
[00:15:15] And the only reason he hadn't been punished was because God was with him. That God was protecting him because of God's promises.
[00:15:26] Now God is saying that this is the past from now on. The blessing is a new testimony, a new reputation, a new way of living, new direction and new priorities.
[00:15:37] By naming him Israel, God is claiming authority over Jacob from now on. I'm the authority in your life.
[00:15:46] Not you are not the own authority of your life anymore. It is now me.
[00:15:52] You might remember that Pharaoh changed Josiah's son's name, taking authority over Jehoiakim.
[00:16:00] Nebuchadnezzar had changed Daniel, Hananiah, Michelle and Azariah's name to Belshazar, Belteshazar to Shadrach, Meshach and Abindigo, taking authority over them.
[00:16:12] But now God is declaring his authority over Jacob's life. This is the blessing.
[00:16:19] And Jacob would have understood all the ramifications of a name change.
[00:16:26] The blessing of God was not reinforcements, was not a plan of entrance, not an absence of even fear.
[00:16:36] Now the way forward, the blessing was to be ruled by God, for God to be the authority, a change of nature.
[00:16:46] Now the physical cons outweigh the pros, the cons. Lots of vulnerable children and mothers, servants, livestock, no army, no sleep all night, exhausted, hip out of joint, brothers reputation for anger and rage,
[00:17:00] no good response from Issa, in fact no response from Issa, 400 marching men, pros, God's word.
[00:17:09] No going back to Padaam or Ram. I'm not sure if that's a pro or con. Wives are willing, blessing of God, name change.
[00:17:19] Cons are way more than the pros. Yet the way of God is forward with God's promises, God's people and God's authority.
[00:17:28] So Jacob names the place Penelope, even as he named the place of his first encounter with God Bethel. Now this is Pinaeum.
[00:17:36] In other words, he's saying if God preserved my life in hand to hand combat, hand to hand wrestling with the man of God, certainly God will protect me from here forward.
[00:17:53] At the first place he saw God and entered into a covenant with God based on God's promises. Now this place, he has seen wrestled God face to face the most death, the fine experience that could ever happen.
[00:18:05] Yet his life is preserved and God is going to preserve his life. The way forward is into the will of God. It doesn't matter what the pros and cons are.
[00:18:14] It doesn't matter the mistakes or who he was in the past. It doesn't matter what appears to be up ahead.
[00:18:24] The way forward is by conversion, unnamed change. It's by a change of nature.
[00:18:32] In Matthew chapter 18, when the disciples asked Jesus who is the greatest in the kingdom of God?
[00:18:38] Jesus took a child and put him in the midst and he said to them, assuredly I say to you unless you are converted and become his children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
[00:18:50] Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. You see Jesus was saying, you know what?
[00:18:57] We don't have that kind of hierarchy in the kingdom of heaven.
[00:19:00] The way into the promises of God, the way forward is by a radical conversion.
[00:19:08] The way forward into the will of God and the promises of God is by a name change. It's by a change of nature.
[00:19:17] You need to go from supplanter and self-rule and getting for yourself into being under the authority of God and letting God be the direction, God being the authority in your life.
[00:19:33] This is a change of nature, a weakening of ourselves. It is getting a tenacious grip on God and letting God have the ultimate word over and in our lives.
[00:19:46] This is the way into the kingdom of God, into seeing what it's like to experience the kingdom of God here on earth and then being transported into heaven into the great kingdom of God.
[00:20:02] This is the way into the will of God, all that God has for you, all his promises. This is the way to go forward.
[00:20:09] Is God preparing you to go forward? My dad used to love to sing this hymn deeper, deeper in the love of Jesus.
[00:20:19] Daily, may I go. Deeper, deeper. Is God preparing you to go deeper, off the deep end into the will of God?
[00:20:29] Stephen Curtis Chapman has a song, I'm going deep over the top. Are you ready to go deeper into the will of God?
[00:20:39] Has there been a change of atmosphere? Have you been feeling the hostility of the world saying, I can't fit in any longer?
[00:20:48] Out there is jealousy and it's changed towards me. I used to be able to get along with the world, but now it's changed. It's not the same.
[00:20:59] I've seen how they're acting. It's like the veil is off and I've seen really what the world is like.
[00:21:05] Has God spoken a word to you? Has someone confirmed or affirmed? Maybe someone who knows your circumstances, who's going to be affected by the change in your life.
[00:21:19] They're saying I sense God is for you. This is right. Has God closed a door behind you? Like I can't go back into that.
[00:21:27] Do you feel afraid to go forward? Have you been weighing the pros and cons? Are you doing your best to make the transition pleasant? Great.
[00:21:36] Get ready for a name changer. Get ready, hold on to God and say, God, I'm not letting go until you bless me.
[00:21:46] And know that the blessing means to come fully under the authority of God more than you have ever been before.
[00:21:54] Where you throw up your hands and say, not my will, but yours be done. This is what brings us into.
[00:22:02] This is the way forward into all the promises of God. This is the radical conversion.
[00:22:07] And it seems like God is bringing us to these places over and over again. Over and over again as a Christian, we're coming to these places.
[00:22:18] Doors closing behind us going, wait, you closed that door? Forever? No going back?
[00:22:26] And that sometimes the way ahead, it looks scary, but God, the way ahead looks so frightening.
[00:22:34] But God is saying me, I want to bless you.
[00:22:39] And the way I bless you is by taking full authority over your life, changing your nature, coming into your life, bringing my heart, my rule, my authority as keen as I am.
[00:22:55] In your heart, making you more like me. We say, make me more like Jesus. That's the way he does it.
[00:23:04] That's his objective to make us more like Jesus. Oh, if only we were all like Jesus, right? If we were as loving as Jesus.
[00:23:10] If we were as wise as Jesus. When we meet Pharisees, we're like, just show me a coin. If only we could be more like Jesus.
[00:23:18] That's what God wants to do. He wants to create a church that is like Jesus, from individuals who are like Jesus.
[00:23:27] So that when people want to see and meet Jesus, you know what they do? They just come to Calvary Chapel Coats Mesa.
[00:23:32] They're going to meet him again and again and again and again. Thank you one hand.
[00:23:37] They will meet him. That's what he's about. He wants to change each of our natures to become more like Jesus.
[00:23:44] Because you know what he had? God had absolute 100% authority over Jesus.
[00:23:50] Jesus said, I have come not to do my own will, but to do the will of my father.
[00:23:55] He said, I always do the things that please the father. That's the game changer. That's the change of nature.
[00:24:02] That's what will propel us into the promises of God. That's what will change the atmosphere and take us to the place God has for us.
[00:24:10] This is what God has for you. Not the pros and cons, but his authority. His blessing is his authority over us.
[00:24:22] His transforming work that comes into us and makes us like Jesus.
[00:24:29] God has a purpose for our lives and doesn't give up on us.
[00:24:33] Jacob schemed and deceived, and yet God worked in and through his life.
[00:24:38] Even renaming him Israel, meaning governed by God.
[00:24:42] God formed Jacob through hard situations to bring him forward into his will and way.
[00:24:49] He was learning how to trust God and be led by him.
[00:24:52] God wants the same for us today.
[00:24:55] As we rely on God and allow him to be the authority in our lives, he'll transform us and take us into all he has purposed for us.
[00:25:04] We hope you have been blessed by today's Bible study.
[00:25:07] For more information about the Gracious Words radio program and the teaching ministry of Cheryl Brodersen, please visit our website at graciouswords.com.
[00:25:16] Coming up next time on the Gracious Words program, we'll look at Jacob's journey back to Bethel as we continue our series, Our Great Creator.
[00:25:24] In the book of Genesis with Cheryl Brodersen.
[00:25:27] We do hope you make plans to join us.
[00:25:29] Again, for more information please visit our website at graciouswords.com.
[00:25:33] We will come for you Lord and wonder, wonder.
[00:25:43] We will fall on our knees and surrender.
[00:25:49] We surrender to you.
[00:25:53] This program is sponsored by Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California.
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