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Jacob had to learn to relay on God
Introduction
This semester as a youth we have learned some lessons from some legends of the Bible.
Not that the accounts in God’s Word that we looked at are fables but real living people and events that really took place.
The men and women of the Bible were normal people with normal problems and shortcomings just as we have today.
But through their faith and obedience God used them in their time for their generation.
Tonight, I want to look at a man that is not really known for his great faith or even great obedience.
But God lead him and taught that he could trust Him.
Jacob is that man known for getting himself into a problem of his own making.
He wasn’t the type to just trust God.
He had to learn the hard way so to speak.
When we speak of Jacob we often speak of his deception, his lies, and his schemes.
But tonight, if I may paint a little different picture of Jacob.
Because in reality Jacob was a man not much different than many of us.
I believe Jacob knew he could trust God.
He knew the stories of how God called his grandfather from his country and brought him to the land of promise and provided for him.
He knew that Abraham completely trusted God even to the point of almost sacrificing his own son on the alter.
Jacob knew he simply had to have faith and obey God at his Word.
But he had to learn the reality of that.
He had to learn the practice of faith.
It is one thing to think that you can trust God and another to actually live out that faith.
A young girl, unaccustomed to traveling, was taking a train ride through the country, and it happened that in the course of the day her train was going to cross two branches of a river and several wide streams.
The water seen in advance always awakened doubts and fears in her.
She did not understand how it could safely cross.
As they drew near the river, however, a bridge appeared, and furnished a way over two or three times the experience was repeated.
Finally the child leaned back with a long breath of relief and confidence.
“Somebody has put bridges for us all the way!” she said in trusting content.
That is life.
We fear so many evils, so many troubles look dark ahead, so many difficulties seen insurmountable as they loom before us; but as we advance we find that there is a way through them.
God has built bridges for us all the way.
Maybe tonight, you are much like Jacob, maybe its stubbornness, maybe its fear, and maybe its a lack of faith in action.
Although, like Jacob, you may know the stories of how God has worked and is still working in the lives of others the practice of faith is harder to put into action.
Maybe you are like a man who speak with John Wesley:
One day John Wesley was walking with a troubled man who expressed his doubt as to the goodness of God.
He said, “I do not know what I shall do with all this worry and trouble.”
At the same moment Wesley saw a cow looking over a stone wall.
“Do you know,” asked Wesley, “why that cow is looking over the wall?”
“No,” said the man who was worried.
Wesley said, “The cow is looking over the wall because she cannot see through it.
That is what you must do with your wall of trouble—look over it and avoid it.”
Faith enables us to look past our circumstances and focus on Christ.
Tonight, I want to point your attend to the life of Jacob and how God brought him to the point of faith and obedience.
Maybe you are wrestling with God but you are not giving in.
You are trying to make your way over life’s trouble.
But can I ask you, “Haven’t you had enough?
Haven’t you had enough of making your own way?
Have you been trying to figure your own way through the stone walls of life?
Jacob learned the hard way, but he didn’t have to.
And either do you?
Maybe you are thinking, but I can’t have a great faith, I can’t just simply walk by faith and not by sight as 2 Corinthians 5:7 tells us.
That is just not my nature to have complete trust.
If we did the trust exercise with spouses up here tonight, how many would say I have complete faith in my spouse to not let me hit the floor?
I just don’t have a great faith like that.
But here is the thing, God doesn’t ask you to have a big faith.
Just look at what Christ tells His Disciples
Let’s take a look for a few moments at Jacob as we learn that even through life’s difficulties just the smallest faith makes all the difference.
Obtaining the Blessing
Although God promised to prosper him, Jacob decided to make sure he would obtain this blessing.
Jacob reasoned that he could receive God’s promised blessing if he lied.
So Jacob lied about his identity and actions.
He even lied about the Lord.
Haven’t many of us done this.
Not the lie, but knowing God promise to provide and take care of us, yet we do everything in our power to make sure that He does.
Maybe your like me.
I don’t like not being in control.
I remember just after my first was born, thinking that I have this little life, this precious innocent boy to take care of and provide for.
I also knew that Ryan was a gift from God, that He would provide for us.
But I did everything in my power to make sure that God would take care of my family.
So I worked, and worked, and worked.
Even to the point that I quit coming to church because my jobs demanded so much of me.
There was a time that I thought I had to take care of my family so much that I was working two jobs at 13 hours a day and even most Saturday’s.
Why?
Because I was going to take care of my family.
Not that working and taking care of your responsibilities is a bad thing.
But I was trusting in myself to provide.
I had not placed that faith in God as my families provider.
“God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible.
What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.”—A.
W. Tozer
This was Jacob’s mindset and if we are honest we often come here ourselves.
Trying to just do what “We” can do to make it through whatever life throws at us.
When we should lay in God’s hands and let God take control.
Running from the Problem
Jacob’s deception angered his brother and upset his father.
But instead of changing his ways, Jacob schemed again.
He left home on the pretext of finding a wife when was really attempting to escape his brother’s wrath.
This scheme just caused more problems than Jacob and his mother ever guessed.
Jacob left home under a terrible cloud:he was reputed as a man not one could trust.
Jacob traveled to Bethel where God repeated to Jacob each aspect of the covenant He had first made with Abraham and the passed on to Isaac.
Jacob vowed there at Bethel, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way… then shall the Lord be my God.”
Jacob then received God’s promises, but he continued to live as though their fulfillment depended on his own abilities and scheming.
Sometimes when we face a problem or trouble in life we run away from it.
As to say that if I am facing this difficulty God must not be in it.
Therefore He is moving somewhere easier.
But If I may say, if you run from your problems, you will just take them with you.
Paul Chappell said, “Never make a major decision in life while going through a trial.”
Why? because you are acting on emotion and not trusting God.
It may be that trial is there to grow your faith.
“God delights to increase the faith of His children.
We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, to be willing to take them from God’s hand as a means.
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