Forging New Patterns

Once we’ve made peace with our past, we must learn to forge new patterns. To do this requires us to take ownership for the ways we contribute to the pain of the people around us. All of us have ways of coping with pain in our own lives, and some of these coping mechanisms can be good. If we’re lucky, we learn from our parents what it means to own up to our mistakes, forgive others, and resolve conflict well. But all of us also carry negative coping mechanisms into our relationships as well. Some call these negative coping mechanisms attachment styles. We learn how to get what we want from people and how to avoid pain that comes with relationships. Put another way, all of us tend to cope by becoming either peace-fakers or peace-breakers. We fake peace by ignoring conflict, pain, and hard conversations with others. We break peace by blowing up on those around us, storming off, and giving into anger and resentment. And like all negative coping mechanisms, these patterns are often fueled by lies we believe about ourselves, others, and God. By making peace with our patterns, we’re intentionally confronting our flesh. We’re calling out the selfish parts of who we are and refusing to let it rule over our relationships. Like the Psalmist in Psalm 139, we’re inviting God to search us and know us to get rid of the offensive and sinful parts of us (Psalm 139:23-24).

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 Genesis chapter 25. Every few months we pick up a practice of Jesus and we’re in the middle of that right now where we habituate something Jesus did in his lifetime. We put it into our minds, our hearts, and even our bodies. And so we’ve done this with Sabbath, scripture, hospitality, and now we’re doing it with peacemaking.

We’re in week two and our working definition is on the screen. Here’s what we believe peacemaking is. The practice of peacemaking is doing the hard work of forgiving our pasts, forging new patterns, and framing our pain in order to fulfill our purpose of loving God and serving him. And others. So last week was so fun.

It was forgiving our past. And here’s the bad news. You are a product of your past. There’s no other way around it. And I’m so glad I did this sermon last week because now my family’s here this week. So now, you know, I talked a lot about family dynamics and history and they weren’t here. So that was wonderful.

I’m kidding. It’s my family, not hers. You’re safe, Krista. Now, um, for those who did the genogram this week, Uh, you, you saw that like, wow, there’s a lot of great things from your family and a lot of difficult things. And we, we just, we pass down the sins of our fathers and mothers to us and sadly to our children.

But here’s the good news. Yes, you are shaped by your past, but you don’t have to be shackled to it. We believe in the gospel here. We believe that in Christ we are forgiven. And what that means is not just that God has forgiven us, but we can now forgive ourselves of our past. And even more importantly, too, we can forgive everybody who’s ever hurt us in our past.

We also believe in Christ. We’re renewed. So we’re given a new heart with new desires and new abilities where we can truly begin new family legacies. And so a key idea for us at our church, especially in the series, is that some of Christ’s saving work happens in a moment and we celebrate that we’re going to have baptisms next week.

We’re going to talk about that, how there is a moment of conversion. It’s beautiful, but a lot of Christ’s saving work is through the marathon. Especially things like peacemaking, you can’t just fix all your family dynamics and completely forgive everybody in the span of five minutes. Although I would like that sign me up.

It takes a marathon. And that’s why we believe in a local church. Let’s run this race together. Let’s do this hard work together. Together. So step one in the marathon of peacemaking was last week forgiving your past. Step two in this marathon is forging new patterns. This word pattern is what it sounds like it is.

It’s something you repeatedly do to relate to other people. So most of us have actually really, really unhealthy patterns. How many of us, we keep finding ourselves in codependent relationships. You keep breaking people off and never seem to carry friends longer than two, three years. That’s because you have some patterns that likely were passed down to you and you keep passing them through you.

We believe in the power of Jesus. We can end those patterns today. At least begin to do so. So on this beautiful Mother’s Day, let’s revisit Abraham’s dysfunctional family. Happy Mother’s Day. I promise I didn’t plan this. Even Pastor Caleb was like, should we do peacemaking during May? Because Mother’s Day is on May and we might make some whatever.

Happy Mother’s Day. That part’s over. Now let’s get in the Bible and let’s be honest. We’re all dysfunctional. So last week, Abraham and Isaac This week, the grandsons, Jacob and Esau, and we’re going to first begin in chapter 25. We’re going to read a lot of Genesis today, so buckle up. We’re going to look at how this sibling rivalry began.

Verse 21, Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was childless. Many in our congregation know that pain very well. The Lord was receptive to his prayer and his wife, Rebecca, conceived. But the children inside her struggled with each other and she said, why is this happening to me? So she went to inquire of the Lord.

And the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb. Two peoples will come from you and be separated. One people will be stronger than the other. And this is what was shocking, especially in the ancient Near East and the older will serve the younger. When her time came to give birth, they were indeed twins in her womb.

So apparently they couldn’t see ahead of time. You know, they didn’t have that thing that makes the fun noise and the gel and the nastiness, right? They had no idea. Oh my gosh, it is twins. Verse 25. The first one came out red looking, covered with hair like a fur coat and they named him Esau. Like he’d be on tiktok today.

Like he just has like, if you’ve seen those people, I’m not trying to make fun of that at all. I understand. But like people like, like look like a gorilla, like in real life. This is Esau hair everywhere. Okay. And red shout out to the ginger beards in the house. Amen. We’re there for each other. Now, after this verse 26, his brother came out grasping Esau’s heel with his hand.

So I want you to notice a lot of our relational patterns even happen at birth. Jacob wants Esau’s position. Um, So, he was named Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when they were born. Can you imagine six year olds in the room having a child just now? Pray for Isaac, right? When the boys grew up, Isaac became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman, a manly man.

But Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home. Happy Mother’s Day, Mama’s boy, right? Verse 28, Isaac loved Esau. Because he had a taste for wild game. But Rebecca loved Jacob. A lot of favoritism there. Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field exhausted. He said to Jacob, let me eat some of that red stuff because I’m exhausted.

That is why he was also named Edom. Jacob replied, first sell me your birthright. Look, said Esau, I’m about to die. So what good is a birthright to me? Jacob said, swear to me first. So he swore to Jacob and sold his birthright to him. So he gets the rights of being a firstborn now. Verse 34, then Jacob gave bread and lentil stew to Esau.

So he ate, drank, got up and went away. And so Esau despised his birthright. That is just the beginning of this sibling rivalry that has a bunch of information for us and how we can better relate to others, especially our own family. So let’s pray as we dive in. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, thank you for the opportunity to worship you in spirit and in the truth.

God, I pray that today we get honest. A lot of us come from really broken families. And that’s just because we’re human. And so God, we humble ourselves before you. May we admit in our own power, we can’t seem to fix what’s broken in us. But God, may we be hopeful. May today may be the day for some of us to begin to new, develop new patterns to create new family legacies.

To make it so much easier on our children or our children’s children to follow the way of Jesus. God, we love you. Have your way. In Jesus name, I pray. Everybody says, Amen. When disappointment is at your door, do you run to drama, dopamine, or discipleship? Some of your families, you run to drama. For some reason, this was me this week.

I like kept wanting to poke the bear. I don’t know what it was. I’m usually very kind, but I just kept, you know, anybody else with their spouse? Like, Hey, I’m going to say this thing. It’s funny, but she won’t think it’s funny. Whatever. All right. So this is drama. Some of us, we just like to fight. If this is your family, this means you have to go to all the family parties.

Cause you know, gossip’s going to happen. So if you’re there, maybe they won’t gossip about you, but if you don’t make it, you know, You’re the star of that show, brother. So you better get there fast. Other times in family, there’s always drama. We dig up the past. We talk about what you used to do this, that, and the other.

And there’s always somebody to shun in the family, right? There’s like, who are we not talking? Which cousin are we not allowed to talk about today? Is this just me? All right now, and it’s not a holiday or a birthday without someone in the family, storming off just typical drama stuff for other people, like the van camps, the answers, dopamine.

Just sweep it out of the rug, brother. Let’s not talk about any difficulties. Let’s act like we love each other, even though we have all sorts of thoughts inside of us. But let’s smile it out. Let’s hide it. Let’s numb it. Let’s push it off for another day. But God’s grace, some of us can genuinely say discipleship.

When there’s relational pain, we bring it before God. When somebody wrongs you, we approach them in love. Look what we’ve done wrong first. And we genuinely want to become disciples of Jesus and we don’t want to perpetuate hate or destruction. But how you answer that question is a peek into your relational patterns.

Esau seems to love the drama. Jacob seems to love the dopamine. To put it another way, Esau was a peace breaker and Jacob was a peace faker. Which one are you? Let’s talk about the peace breaker Esau. So Jacob, we just read the story how he stole the birthright from Esau. Not a cool thing. Go to chapter 27 in Genesis.

Jacob steals Esau’s blessing. Now blessing is a big deal. This was the final gift parents would give to their children and they really believed in the blessings. Like this really did forecast your future. So not only did he get the birthright, but now Jacob deceives. His father and acts like he is Esau in order to receive the blessing and it’s so crazy guys This is how hairy Esau is he puts on goat skin and so Isaac has lost his vision, but he feels like oh this feels like Esau this feels like my firstborn So i’m gonna give you these blessings pretty and crazy stuff, but look how Esau responds with rage By deciding to kill Jacob, look at verse 41 of chapter 27, Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him.

And Esau determined in his heart, the days of mourning for my father are approaching. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. Is he a peace breaker? Absolutely. Also, if you keep going, Esau is so enraged at his parents because he feels like Jacob is the favorite. He hears that, uh, they don’t want Jacob to marry a certain woman from a certain area.

And so Esau says, cool, I’m going to have my thing. third wife be from that area. So he does it just to spite them. He wants to, he’s mad at his parents and all he knows how to do with that is just to make it even worse. He is a piece breaker. Classic case of that. Jacob is a classic piece faker. Jacob literally means deceiver or schemer, and that’s very important for us later in this story.

He tricks and deceives most of his life. Again, he pretended to be Esau in order to get the blessing. He put on goatskin in order to fool his father, who was blind, and he can’t deal with drama. Look at how he responds to hearing that Esau is mad. Look at verse 43. His mom gives this advice, So now my son, listen to me.

Flee at once to my brother Laban and Haran. And that’s exactly what he does. He doesn’t deal with drama. He runs away from it. Genesis 29 problems follow him. He goes to Laban and here’s what’s crazy about the story. And here’s what’s so true. We think we fake peace or break peace because we think we’re in control, but we never are.

And so Jacob thinks he can fake his way out of everything. Now meets his ultimate match because he is tricked. by his father Laban. So Laban tricked the trickster. He thinks he’s marrying Rebecca, uh, sorry. Who’s he think he’s marrying? I just blanked it. Help me. Rachel. Why? I’m a pastor and I love my Bible, I promise.

Rachel. Instead, who does he get? Leah, right? He got tricked. Now my question to you, which one are you? Are you a peace faker or a peace breaker? Peace breakers break away Before you can break their heart. Peacefakers fake success so you won’t love them less. Again, which one are you? Peacebreakers, here’s what they do.

They hurt others in order to protect themselves. They always look like they have it all together, like nothing bothers them. They want you to think that so you don’t hurt them. Peace fakers, they hide from others in order to protect themselves. They never really truly share who they really are and what their struggles are because they’re so afraid of you leaving them.

Peace breakers, they’re afraid of love. So you can never get too close to them. Some of us have developed relationship with friends and it seems like we really hit it off, but then we get too close and they have to break off. It’s just their pattern. They can’t deal with that kind of intimacy. And so they make up a lie.

They find a reason to no longer be friends and they’re off on their way. Peace fakers, they’re not afraid of love. They’re afraid to lose love. So they do whatever it takes to keep it. They lose their own identity. They’re never honest with themselves. They’re chameleons trying to just please everybody in the room in order to be loved.

Peace breakers are angry. They’re often very distrusting. You never know what mood they’re gonna be in. You’re walking on eggshells around peace breakers. Peace fakers, they’re anxious and deceiving. You never actually know the real them. Now this sort of dysfunction is not just in Jacob and Esau, is it?

It’s in you, and it’s in me. But the Bible, the story of Genesis, is that God created the world to live in shalom, to live in peace. We’re supposed to be peacemakers. But since Genesis 3, sin has entered the picture, and the rest of Genesis is a picture of what happens when sin enters the room. It breaks apart families.

It hurts people. It kills people. And yet, we’ve, all throughout Genesis is this promise that there will be a Jesus who will make all of these things right. And so Jacob is in an interesting situation by the time we get to chapter 31. Jacob has been avoiding his brother Esau for 20 years. And here’s what’s sad about that.

He, if he had to avoid Esau for 20 years, who also did he avoid? His mama. Jacob loved his mom, but he was so afraid of Esau and faked the peace so much he left. He never had time with his mom for 20 very important years. Because he didn’t know how to make peace. But now, God calls him to healing. And I pray for many of us today.

We receive this call from the Lord as well. Chapter 31, verse 2. And Jacob saw from Laban’s face that his attitude towards him was not the same as before. So now there’s friction there. So Jacob is tempted to leave, which he does. But, the Lord directs it in a good way. Verse 3. The Lord said to Jacob, Go back to your the land of your ancestors and to your family, and I will be with you.

Here’s the thing. A lot of us, we think we’ve had a broken family, broken past, and we think we’ve healed because we’ve left them. Everything’s better now because I’m not around those people anymore. I really believe for you to actually be healed. You don’t know if you’re healed unless you go back to your origins and you can still make peace.

You are anxious. You’re not angry. You can be a non anxious presence back at home. This, uh, this book I was reading this week was talking about emotional health and they said you haven’t really reached that kind of health or maturity until you can go back and spend three days with your family. They said mainly, usually by the time the third day comes around, you revert back to childhood and you have all your peace breaking and peace faking tendencies.

For me, I was with my family for three hours this week and I was like, Lord, I got work to do, right? This is just what happens. And so we have to, what we’re hoping to do in peacemaking is become the type of healed people. Where we can go back to those who have hurt us, not always family, other relationships, and we can truly be at peace.

So that’s what God wants to do through Jacob. And Jacob starts to obey. It’s, we see transformation happening because Jacob starts to head home. As you read through chapter 31, you’ll also notice though, he’s going home, but he still wants to use deception. He still wants to fake his way to success. Look at, uh, verse 20.

Dealing with Laban, he says, And Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean, not telling him that he was fleeing. He fled with all his possessions, crossed the Euphrates, and headed for the hill country of Gilead. Here, the Genesis narrative is so brilliant. So this is a hint. Jacob wants transformation. He’s on that journey, but he’s not fully transformed.

He wants to make peace, but he’s still faking it. He’s still deceiving. He hasn’t really experienced this new moment in his life of healing. In Genesis 32, we now see Jacob really heading home, and he’s dealing with the stress of meeting his brother Esau. He deals with it in three ways. Number one, he splits his family into two groups.

He hears Esau has 400 men with him. He remembers Esau was a manly man, a hunter, a warrior. So he’s thinking he might kill us. So here’s what I have to do. Let’s split our family into two. Some of my least favorites over there, right? My favorites over here. Hope they get those. I don’t know. I’m just, you know, so they go into two groups with this whole idea.

If Esau attacks, I’ll only lose half of my people. He’s afraid, but number two, he does a great thing. He prays to God. He reminds God of the covenant and asked him to rescue him from Esau. Chapter 32 verse 11 says, please rescue me from my brother Esau for I am afraid of him. Otherwise he may come and attack me, the mothers and their children.

And then number three, as you keep reading, he sends Esau a lot of gifts. Now there’s really two interpretations as to what Jacob is doing. If Jacob is healing and he’s becoming a righteous man, what he’s doing, he’s sending restitution. Here’s what we believe as gospel people. It’s one thing to apologize for a wrong that you’ve done.

It’s another as gospel people, we need to make restitution. So if I steal your car. I can’t just say, Hey, I’m sorry. I feel so bad, but I’m keeping the car. Is that an apology? No, an apology is here’s a car and it’s got a full tank of gas, right? It’s making restitution. So he took the birthright and the blessing.

So Jacob’s got it all. He is rolling with money, right? Cash is king for this guy. He’s got a lot of it. But now he sends it ahead possibly to say, Esau, I stole some of this from you. I want you to have some of this back, but some people think, I don’t know if Jacob’s transformed enough yet. So probably he’s doing what most of us do.

He was buttering Esau up. Anybody else when you want to ask anytime I want to go to the cabin, which for me means I’m going alone, it’s glorious for like 36 hours and just being alone with all my books. And it’s great. So I have to butter up my wife. I got to take her to sushi the night before. I got to tell her how beautiful she is, even though I do that every day.

Right, babe. Yes. And so, you know, you butter her up and then you go, by the way, can I leave you for the next day and a half? Right. That’s what you do. Good, good, uh, marriage advice. Not really. I don’t know, but here’s what he’s doing. He’s buttering them up. And I love that we don’t know for sure. Is Jacob making restitution or is he buttering him up?

And that’s life, isn’t it? We’re very complex. The reality is the answer is probably both. Jacob wants to make things right, but he’s also terrified. So he’s anxious. So he wants to make peace, but he’s faking it also. We are all a mixed bag, but here’s what’s clear. Jacob isn’t settled. He’s living in fear.

He’s anxious. He really wants peace, but he’s not sure if he can ever come. And now comes to the crux of this passage, verse 24 through 31, Jacob transitions from a peace faker to a peacemaker. And the how is pretty shocking. Verse 24, Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not defeat him, he struck Jacob’s hip socket.

As they wrestled and dislocated his hip. Then he said to Jacob, let me go for it is daybreak. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. What is happening here? There’s going to be context clues later on in this verse, but Jacob believes he’s actually wrestling God. And if he’s wrestling God, that’s why he says, I want you to bless me, God.

But also this is why God in the flesh, some people think it’s called a Christophany. This is Christ before he came, right? Because Christ always existed. This might be a Christophany. He’s wrestling with Jacob and he says, you can’t see my face in the daytime because if you see my face, you will surely die because of the holiness of God.

So he’s wrestling, which by the way, why is God wrestling Jacob? Um, Cause Jacob spent his whole life running. And I don’t know, I, we got some jujitsu people in the room. You can’t run and wrestle at the same time, right? I don’t think if you can, that’s kind of talentless, right? You got to stay in this one spot and you got to wrestle it out.

So verse 27 is the pivotal moment. What is your name? The man asked the last time Jacob was blessed. What did he say? His name was Esau. So now this is a pivotal moment. When you’re reading, you got to realize there’s probably silence between the questions, right? Think of it as a movie. What is your name? I can imagine Jacob wondering, who do I actually say that I am?

And he answers, Jacob. What does Jacob also mean? The deceiver. He’s saying, here I am. I’m the deceiver. I’m the schemer. I’m the one who’s been running this whole time. Verse 28, your name will no longer be Jacob, he said. It will be Israel. Because you have struggled or wrestled with God and with men and have prevailed.

Then Jacob asked him, please tell me your name. But he answered, why do you ask my name? And he blessed him there. And we don’t know what that blessing was, by the way. It’s kind of a special intimate moment between God and Jacob. We don’t see the rest of these blessings. But verse 30, Jacob then named the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, he said, and yet my life has been spared.

The sun shone on him as he passed by Peniel, limping because of his hip. There’s a lot here, but how does Jacob experience the blessing of peace he’s always been looking for? By realizing the fight wasn’t ever between him and Esau, but him and God. You read, actually, more of the story in Genesis. Jacob’s constantly wrestling, struggling, and fighting.

Not just with Esau, he’s grabbing the heel. He’s, he’s fighting with Isaac, his father. He’s fighting with Laban, his father in law. And the whole point is to see Jacob’s never satisfied. He’s always disappointed. He feels like nobody actually knows him and therefore nobody actually loves him. And I wonder who else can relate in the room.

And so many of, in this room, have never experienced what the Bible calls peace that passes understanding because you’ve never been willing to wrestle with God. There was a young man who heard about this wise sage, Father Makarios, and so he approached him one day and says, Father Makarios, do you still wrestle with the devil?

The father replied, No, I used to wrestle with the devil all the time, but now I have grown old and tired And the devil has grown old and tired with me. So I leave him alone and he leaves me alone. Young man replied, so life is easy now. Father Mercario said, Oh no, life is much harder for now. I wrestle with God.

The young man exclaimed, so you wrestle with God and hope to win. Father said, no, I wrestle with God. and hope to lose. See, many of us in the beginning of our faith journey, it’s very important for us to spend a lot of our energies fighting against the devil, the lust, the world, the flesh. But you will find in your walk with the Lord, eventually you will hit a wall.

Eventually, you will grow tired and there’s going to be parts of your soul, parts of peace that you’ve never been able to acquire. There’s going to be ways you relate to people. There’s going to be resentment and bitterness that you can never seem to overcome. And I believe that is the invitation to you to switch, to transition from wrestling with the devil, to wrestling with God.

And so the next obvious question, if you are convinced we should wrestle with God, it’s how we bring about freedom. How do we do it? We get away and we get honest or more biblical terms. We developed the patterns of solitude and confession. A quick word on each. Notice Jacob in verse 24 was left alone.

This is solitude. It’s really important for Jacob to be alone because now he has no place to hide and nobody to fool. Right? When you’re alone, you can put the mask down, you don’t have to worry about what other people think of you. And so many of us, we can’t afford some of us going to the cabin and doing those things.

But I think even how we approach our mornings, how we approach our nights, there’s these little moments throughout the day that we can have solitude with God, lay everything at his feet and just be honest about who we are and who we’re not. It’s in the solitude where God begins to do his greatest work.

This is why I think a lot of times, uh, Children and teenagers, they’re raised up in the church and it’s wonderful. And we’re dedicating that today. It’s awesome. A lot of times in college they go off and kind of don’t follow the Lord, at least for a season. And this is actually a part of the process because usually if they never really believed in God on their own, never got alone with God themselves, the moment those influences leave, they’re not following God anymore.

So it’s important. For our children to have moments of solitude with God and support and for us, this relationship has to become personal. If we want healing, we’re going to have to get away and get honest, uh, relational soul. I think we have a couple of books, uh, available still in the back. They have this great quote by Plass and Cofield.

He says the following. When we are preoccupied with maintaining an image that the soul was not created to maintain, we grow spiritually weary. We become disillusioned and discouraged without knowing why. God feels distant and so do others. The closeness we desperately need and want eludes us. The weight of creating our own false self identity overburdens our souls.

We become susceptible to despair and bad behavior. But in the solitude is where we lay all of that down. And that leads to confession. Confession, Jacob finally came to God, not with who he wanted to be, but by who he was. Again, last time he was blessed, who did Jacob say he was? Esau. But now he says, I can’t, I can’t lie anymore.

I’m exhausted. I’m Jacob, the deceiver. I’m Jacob, the schemer. I’m the reason our family’s broken apart. I keep faking. I keep running away and I’m wrestling with you because I’ve lived my whole life. I need a blessing. And it keeps alluding me, and I’m realizing I just need to get honest. And if you are God, I need you to bless the real me.

So my answer can’t be Esau. The answer has to be Jacob, so that it actually sits with me, so that it’s actually there. And for so many of us, confession is so hard. I just want to encourage you. I think for so long, for me, I was so afraid to confess to God, because I was afraid. that he wouldn’t love me in return, right?

Can I really be honest with God? Cause what if, but then I realized he already knows. I read your Bible and you’re like, Oh, he loves like the craziest people. David man, after my own heart committed adultery, killed to cover it up. I mean, just a mess of a guy. Like we wouldn’t even let him greet. And he was a king, you know?

So it’s like, okay, God has grace and compassion for us. Okay. And it’s so important. I think a huge man, we’re really hoping we’ve been talking about this, this series about the wall and we’re hoping to experience healing. I think what we have, if we see what’s really happening in Genesis 32, what Jacob is doing is he’s finally giving God his secrets, his weaknesses, and his sins.

And if there is a mark against the American church, which I think there’s kind of a lot right now, one of them is that we don’t name sin well enough. We’re just kind of generally, God, I’m a sinner. Would you please forgive me? And I think it’s time for us to mature in our faith and to actually name the sins that truly plague us so that we can be forgiven of them.

For example, some words that maybe we can begin to define ourselves and then release it to God is that we’re self absorbed. God, forgive me for being angry, lazy, deceitful. Prideful, greedy, lusting, resentful, manipulative, gluttonous, envious. It’s these like really like devastating sins that break our peace with God and break our peace with others.

And we have to get honest about those things because that’s where healing comes from. Peace. Zero. Another one of our recommended reads warns us of the cost of when we skip confession. He says, quote, our fear of bringing secrets and sin into the light drives many people to prefer the illusion that if they don’t think about it, it somehow goes away.

It doesn’t. Unhealed wounds open us up to habitual sin against God and others. Notice the progression here in Genesis chapter 31. Go back to your family and get healed. Chapter 32. First, wrestle with God. Chapter 33. You will see Jacob actually reconciles with his brother Esau. The message is clear. If we don’t develop the proper relationship with God, we will have no luck in reconciling with man.

But here’s the good news. If you have the audacity to wrestle with God. you’ll gain the capacity to reconcile with man. So if we have the courage to be honest to God and to work that out, it’s amazing what it can do in your relationships. And so in your groups this week, on your way out, make sure you guys grab one of these peacemaking guides.

If you haven’t already, they’re free. So maybe on your own, if you’re not a part of a group yet, we encourage you to go through part two in this. We’re going to give you like a really helpful tool to wrestle with God. So right now we’re saying peace faker and peace breaker. Uh, we’re going to actually give five different types of peace breakers that we can become and peace fakers.

There’s five different modes. I want you to work through that. Honestly, wrestle, ask your spouse. If you have one, which one am I? They’ll tell you. Right. And so you figure that out. But then you wrestle with God, and we have scriptures for each type of person you are. I’m the vacillator, in case you were wondering.

It’s so fun, right? And so you bring that before God, because here’s the reality. How we’ve learned with relational patterns with our parents and just our upbringing is how we assume God thinks of us. And let me tell you, it is not true. God loves you and is so much more compassionate than you can ever think or imagine.

And we want you to wrestle with that. But then We’re going to have you do the hard work of reconciling. And so we’re praying as you go through this. It’s a lot. I told you it was hard work last week. It was the warning. We want you to pray through and think, is there someone in your life you not only need to forgive, but you need to reconcile with.

Remember, forgiveness only takes one. You can forgive anybody. Even if they’re dead, you can forgive them. But reconciliation takes two to tango. So it’s scary because for Esau and Jacob, Jacob didn’t know what Esau would do, but he knew reconciliation was important. So he went and he allowed whatever happened to happen.

And so it’s on us. It takes one to forgive. It takes two to reconcile. We encourage you to wrestle through what that looks like. But. But why is it important to first wrestle with God and then wrestle with man? First John tells us we love because he first loved us. We cannot love our brother if we do not know we are already loved by God.

Okay. But now that we’ve established that, what does that kind of love look like? How do we actually begin to love the people around us in a peacemaking way? Turn to first Corinthians chapter 13. First Corinthians 13 is the love chapter. Now, a lot of people usually, uh, this is for weddings and that’s great, but it’s actually, I think in more context, it’s about how to love the church, how to love each other in community.

Cause it gets really hard. The longer you know each other. Amen. Amen. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So first Corinthians 13 is a beautiful picture of how we can begin to love. And I want us to zero in on just verse seven. If we can even reflect on that this week, what a gift that would be. Verse 7 says, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

I think even just from this passage, I think we have four invitations for you and I to develop healthy relational patterns, and I believe it’s possible because of Christ. We can reconcile with man by establishing the relational patterns of forgiving, Forgiving, Reconciling, Blessing, and Committing. Should be on the screen.

Forgiving, Reconciling, Blessing, and Committing. Quick word on each based off of verse 7. Bears all things, that means we are forgiving people. Because of Christ, we have the ability to cover each other’s offenses. As Jesus people, we love when most people would leave. believes all things. I think this is saying that we reconcile with people.

We don’t hold the past against each other. We don’t hold grudges. It’s a new day filled with new mercies. We right the wrong and invite that person back into relationship. We hope all things, which means we bless others. We don’t count other people out. Your failure isn’t final. We root for you and we have community to root for us.

We speak life into people’s future and finally endures all things. And I think this is the hardest for so many of us. It means that we commit, we don’t give up on each other. Right? We, we’re taking what the saints would call the vow of stability. We’re in this for the long haul, brother and sister, you will wrong me.

I will wrong you, but let’s continue not to break the peace or fake the peace. Let’s do the hard work of making the peace in my mind. That’s the key. That’s the vision of what church should be, not just coming on Sundays, barely knowing each other and heading on out. It is actually living this life and doing the hard work of peacemaking.

And I can assure you as your pastor, so many of our congregation are already doing this. We’re having those hard and awkward conversations all the time. There’s tears sometimes of joy and there’s tears sometimes of sorrow, but man, are we becoming more like Jesus as a result. For those who are doing it, continue that marathon.

For those who haven’t, we invite you into this because we can do this when we do it together. And hear me, here’s why I believe we can do this. It’s because of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. Here’s what’s amazing that I didn’t share. Here in Genesis 32, you’ll notice God touches or struck the hip and now he’s limping the rest of his life.

Now immediate application. Every time Jacob walks, he remembers that he wrestles with God, but there is a deeper thing at play. The hip in the ancient near east represents descendants, represents your offspring. For those who know their Bible, Jacob, eventually, his family line led to who? to Jesus. So God was saying, okay, I am bruising you.

And through this wounding, you will be healed and you will have reconciliation. But it’s the hip because ultimately the only reason you and I ever have peace, the only way it’s possible is because one of Jacob’s descendants will get the ultimate wounding. King Jesus, look, but he was pierced for Our rebellion crushed because of our iniquities.

Punishment for our peace was on him and we are healed by his wounds. Friends, what this means, we can have full assurance that we can bring peace to others because God took the punishment on himself. He was wounded so you and I can be redeemed. He was pierced so you and I could be saved. And so what that means, again, that resurrection power that rose Jesus from the dead is alive and at work in you and me, Romans 8 says, what that means is reconciliation is on offer.

Forgiveness is possible, not because of your power, no, you just make it worse. But through Jesus, that power is given to us and we can truly mend what we thought would always be broken. This happens with Jacob and Esau, at least for a moment in time in Genesis 33. It can happen for you and for me. Let us be reconciling people.

What if we became gospel people that really believe we can put this into practice? Let us be people who forgive, who reconcile, who bless, and who commit. Let’s pray.