"dealing With Difficult Kinsfolk"

29 October 2006

“DEALING WITH DIFFICULT KINFOLK”

Deuteronomy 2:1-8

I know when you hear this sermon subject, everyone in here has someone in mind.  We all have some difficult kinfolk.  If you can’t think of any, maybe you are it!

There are some places in our lives that get entirely too much time in our lives.  We are just circling again.

In the first part of the twentieth century, there were tow philosophical roads to take for the freedom of the recently released slaves and their children. 

a) The vocational direction characterized by Booker T. Washington

b)The Intellectual direction by W.E. B. DuBois. 

We always believed that we would have to choose one over the other but the truth is a little bit of both would strengthen us.

AS the world continues to spiral down the road of destruction, much of the confrontation and conflict is coming from three groups of people who are in fact estranged siblings.  All with one father.  WE cannot seem to get along, partly due to the age-old problem of sibling rivalry.

The children Ishmael and Isaac.

The Children of Esau and Jacob

The children of Esau:

These are your brothers and sisters.  I know much time is passed but this too is a part of the problem.  We do not know our own family history.

Esau, the rugged survivor

Worked with hands.

They are afraid of you.  You are afraid of them. The truth is, you have not had enough time to get to know each other.  You have not invested the resource in trying to set up a new way of relating to one another.

IN reality, we all have some unresolved stuff that blocks or even dictates the manner in which we relate to people now.  We’ve got to learn how to redefine our relationships even those that have hurt us.

Now let’s be honest.  It was Esau who got the raw deal.  Let us not think that we are always the ones on the short end of the stick.  Sometimes we have caused the damage in our families.

1.             Don’t meddle with them.

You would remember that after some time, Jacob was finally going to see Esau again.  This is where he stayed up all night and wrestled…

It was all about h anxiety he had in facing his brother again for the first time.  He did not quite know what to do.

Fear him

Bribe him

God blesses Esau, too.

When Esau ad Jacob met, Jacob discovered that although he had tricked him out of his birthright, although he had done his brother wrong, God still blessed Esau. 

Esau declared.  You don’t have to give me anything.  I have enough.  Look how God has blessed me.

God allows it to rain on the just and the unjust.

2.             Do business with them.

This one may sting.  First God is telling the Israelites that you are not going to get the hookup here.  You know how we do…some of us spend our lives looking for somebody to hook us up.  God has already blessed you.  You have the resources.  When you buy food and water, why can’t you buy it from your own people?

DO you realize what you are singing when you sing, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder?

WE are buying Esau’s water!