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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] good morning fbc and i hope all of you are feeling well at home right now thank you for tuning in we are still in this lockdown and we really trust this morning on this sunday morning god's presence will be you wherever you are before we start the sermon just a little announcement we'd like to thank everybody for their generosity in giving to us pastor rama's fun we have uh actually uh completed it so we thank you for your generosity can i just recommend perhaps uh during this time of pandemic uh pray and
00:00:44 see where god can use your funds for other things there are a lot of other people out there who are suffering perhaps take it one step more than that those of your employers and you're doing well why don't consider a short time employment stint for some people who have no jobs that people have not had jobs for two years do something things like accounts stock keeping you know little little things that are generic skills uh secondly perhaps support businesses were struggling you know don't always go and buy from
00:01:13 amazon and lazada they got a lot of money they are not going to go under anytime soon go and help some small businesses pay a little bit more because what you do will help them cover the rent and these are little things we do as believers faith encompasses everything so let me just come before you first in prayer let's come before the lord in prayer lord we thank you for this morning we thank you for your presence with us and lord as us as i speak i speak with fear and trembling i speak without any
00:01:47 pride in myself i speak with your word and to preach it faithfully and they will not listen we also be doers in jesus name we say this amen we are continuing on with the book of genesis but what we do every month for the last few months is that we're going to take some generous themes in genesis and last time we spoke we looked at how genesis had a lot to talk to us about identity and i want to stress my personal conviction identity is one of the key most understated things that a believer needs to understand and to
00:02:21 grasp because this affects us so much in our behavior science tells us this scripture tells us this and last time i spoke we look at uh we look at jacob and his identity was very much what he was a deceiver and so god told him just basically some recap what you are and what you should be what you are your your the world has impressed and identity onto you as a deceiver is your past some of us is social pleasure his family pressure a lot of things but this is what god wants you to be this is your new man and so god changes
00:02:57 his name secondly we learn that we all have a shared identity and it's important shared identity what is this and first corinthians 7 tells us it is this we belong to christ and in first corinthians 7 doesn't matter whether you're a slave or you're free man or your circumcised uncircumcised married or single or divorced or widowed we are all in christ that is our security and lastly we learn this who am i who does god want me to be we understand this god knows us better than us he knows us by name he knew jacob by
00:03:31 name we don't know god by name because we are not god i mean we cannot we know now he's yahweh but during that time you cannot put him on an equal platform as you so god knows us and he tells moses the same thing i know you by name and so god guides us in our daily journey in the same way he guided joseph from from being in enslavement to prison to king and so today we're going to continue the idea of identity and we're going to look at one identity marker that really shapes all of us and that is families
00:04:03 families probably play the most crucial identity marker in shaping us because we were all brought up we were all children we most of us were wives or husbands and then we became parents so this shapes uh this transformative journey shapes us and you find that scripture has a lot to say about this so this morning we're going to look at identity and family relationships and i what we're going to do today is that we're going to take a wide scope of a lot of the chapters we have studied before i'm just going to pluck a few of it as a
00:04:37 refresher and we're going to do what's known as systematic theology don't be afraid of the big word it means we're going to look at some themes in families so now you might say that you know what families some of you say i didn't come from such a good family so here's some good news for you if you look at all the families the new testament boy they are dysfunctional they were dysfunctional abraham lied about his wife to the king to two kings his son isaac does exactly the same thing learn it from the dead
00:05:11 and then you have of course the children you know you have favoritism isaac love isau and the wife love jacob that went on later on so when jacob got older who did he love he loved joseph you notice the scene is going on and let's not talk about the sibling rivalry the fights that going on and by the way you know you're not just a man the women don't get on either you know the two sisters don't get on you know you find the wives don't get on and let's not start about all the sexual scenes that happen in families boy does
00:05:42 genesis talk about daughters sleeping with their fathers you know fathers treating their daughter like daughter-in-law like a prostitute very r-rated the families in genesis are dysfunctional yet god uses them so if you're you're tuning in this morning and you said i had a bad family background scripture is talking to you here's the opposite you can come from a good family you can have a good inheritance you can have great things that doesn't mean you will turn out right and that's something we're really
00:06:13 going to talk about today let me just give you a few uh what we call ground rules for for what we're going to do today we're going to go through a whole series of scripture i'm going to suggest you're going to go back and read those texts we have all gone through all these sermons and uh what i'm going to tell you right now we're going to look at certain things that genesis has genesis says this thing called a motif on their themes i mean they have certain things that reoccur let me give you one that you would have
00:06:41 picked up there are always tools and in fact this motif of two is all over scripture starts out with two people adam and eve after that two sons cain and abel okay later on abraham two wives hagar and sarah and then afterwards you go on two nations will come out first egypt israel babylon and israel and then later on the new testament two ways to live narrow gate big gate sheep goats and this team of tools carries all the way down why because the motif is telling you something the bible basically says the cross
00:07:20 divides everybody into two camps there are two ways to live you either live under the lord or you live under self so that's a motive i'm gonna carry this motive of two into a deeper motive they call this the younger brother older brother motif and every scholar has picked this up let me explain a little bit of jewish history in in the old testament during this time and especially for the readers who read this because it was really written during the exodus if you were a jew a hebrew the oldest brother was entitled to a lot
00:07:54 of things very much like chinese families the older brother had double portion of inheritance those of you who are chinese i believe indians have the same thing the older brother carried more responsibility the older brother took on if you have a company the business goes to who the business always goes to the older brother so tai saima the older brother got the bigger thing so you're the oldest you had a lot of stuff history shows this if you're king who does who succeeds the throne older brother
00:08:22 that's how everybody wants to kill the older brother so the older brother was very empowered and that's something that history tells us there's something jewish uh deuteronomy law says it he gets double inheritance but this is interesting what genesis does i'm going to show you a broad picture the first older brothers cain and abel who does god favor older brother younger brother younger brother abel next one isaac and ishmael older brother ishmael covenant goes to who isaac third brother jacob itself is the most obvious most
00:08:59 blatant and from the day go the property is the older shall serve the younger favor goes on jacob and then you have joseph and his brothers and who becomes king joseph his second youngest by the way okay and then of course the last one that really and can basically complete the whole picture in this story that most of us don't read it's about ephraim and manasseh and they are the children of joseph and the younger is ephraim and the blessings goes to ephraim and so scholars have picked this up to
00:09:36 say that there's a motive here what is god trying to tell us so what we're going to do that we're going to go through all these five families learn something about family dynamics and i'm going to give you a big lesson about what the younger brother older brother motive means because it carries through to the new testament but a lot of things we're going to learn about families here let's start off with kane and abel i picked up the text genesis 4 1-5 we all know this text i'm not going to read it it basically
00:10:04 gives us the first narrative that there were two offerings and older brother brought an offering younger brother brought an offering and god's favor went on the offering of the younger brother and i i preached on this text before i want to just take it on a few other details that i didn't have time to do last time to really understand these tags you got to go back to genesis chapter 3 the chapter before this and of course when sin entered the world god put a curse he put a curse on a snake a devil and he says
00:10:36 i will put enmity between you and the woman between your offspring and hers he will crush your head you will strike his heel so what do we learn here we learn that there is going to be war so there will be a war and so if you're a you're an israelite you're saying look there's going to be a war there are going to be two armies one the army of the snake the offspring of the snake another one the army of the woman that's going to be the austrian woman so in your mind you start to think whoa and then you begin to say okay
00:11:09 right where we are we're on the exodus this is where the mobiles came from this is where the canaanite these are where the enemies of god came from where did they come from you begin to see where did israelis come from and so when the next verse says adam made love to his wife eve and she became pregnant and gave birth to cain with the help of the lord that brought forth a man what do you think israelite would think he would think ah cain offspring or who offspring a woman for israelite reading this he thinks
00:11:38 cain is on the side of the woman then the story takes a twist and a very famous bible scholar says this the story does like cain switch sides because later on we find god telling him the devil is there you must struggle against your sin which says the lord says this in verse 8 6 why are you so angry if you do what is right you will you not be accepted you do not do what's right sin is crouching at your door that again is a connection with the serpent and but he gives in and so kane switched camps now there's a very simple
00:12:15 story here because when when the israelite reads genesis 3 15 he begins to see where did the war start he begins to imagine land and people fighting guess where the war begins it begins among brothers it begins in the family and so the first thing you learn is this take care of family above your work above your church relationships your family is paramount and deuteronomy 6 will pick this up the war begins in the family how does the war go now how can you save someone who say theologically how can you say that you
00:12:57 know cain is aligned with snake well because later on when we go to chapter five we say is this because what happens in the line of adam you find that there will be two lines there'll be two lines at the end of chapter four um eve says this look at verse 27 god has granted me another child in place of abel uh in place of able self is basically the replacement or able this is the continuity of the line of the woman and so two lines come out and i put it up there for you to have a look and then after that you look that verse
00:13:34 says this that defines the line of seth at the end of chapter four it says at that time men begin to call on the name of the lord then after that the lineage of seth comes in now we all don't like genealogy very boring one only scholars like to read it but i wanted to give you some simple things not to complicate it but look it was quite interesting uh there are numbers here if you look at chapter four the number seven occurs again and again again and again all right we'll talk about the punishment okay
00:14:04 uh uh seven times seven times seven we find that uh lord says in verse 19 anyone kills cain he will suffer vengeance seven times over lamech then says well i'm gonna increase and and distorted to seven times seven times and what do you have here you have seven so that god is trying to tell you something in in the sixth lineage he becomes really bad news now what does the line of cain uh tell us you read it they were entrepreneurs they invented the arts they were doing agriculture they built cities they were like you
00:14:38 know what you want your children to be right they were all graduates to all professionals they made a lot of money but they were evil people and the the line tells you at the sixth line lumek is the worst of the worst he was the first polygamist and he was a he he will kill people and then in the line of seth and the sixth person you have enoch and what are you not known for only this he was commanded as one who pleased god and later on the same story goes with noah the same language he not walked with god noah walked with
00:15:10 god and after that the line splits again out of this ham becomes the father the canaanites and the soul the line splits again this is the line of the woman this is the line of the snake so what we're learning here the authors tell you the importance of what do you pass on to your children what do you pass on now what do asians like to pass on to their children if you ask the asian father right he said hey how are you a parent you say you know i spend money you know i brought them through education uh spare
00:15:44 time i'll go for piano classes no go for ballet go lean the violin do all these things asians to them that is important you ask them how a bible study or a sunday school they will invest in all this thing because to an asian family success is defined as what no it's success as this oh this bit old-fashioned really nowadays you must have more you know computer related skills but in the eyes of the lord what is success in the eyes of the lord is this notice in this line there's no mention of whether you've got a degree no degree
00:16:19 there's only one thing that the lineage has they all depended on the lord so i want to start off with lesson number one on family dynamics what's the most important thing you can pass on to your children to teach them to walk in the lord what's the best way of doing it by them watching you it doesn't matter how successful you are doesn't matter even if you have a lot of struggles if they see you walking a lot that will follow suit because later on you find one thing genesis does is that a lot of things are passed on
00:16:53 from generation to generation let me go on to the next pair isaac and ishmael now this one is quite interesting i'll read it for you we find genesis 17 god's when he does his covenant with isaac he said as for ishmael i've heard you i will surely bless him now this is interesting because both sons are blessed unlike cain and abel where one is cursed but one these two both are blessed i will make fruitful will greatly increase his numbers he'll be the father of twelve rulers i will make him the great nation
00:17:22 now that's a parallel here so ishmael has 12 uh uh uh uh he'll be 12 tribes to come out of him and so were isaac so what having you actually having equality two sons again and ishmael is oldest but my covenant i will establish with isaac the younger brother gets the covenant now this story gets its roots as you know we read it before in genesis 16. and it's a fascinating story about family dynamics and we know she waited and she waited and she waited and she struggled like most parents struggled
00:17:57 and then one point she gave up and she said this the lord has kept me from having children she has now rationalized her view and now she take things into her hand go sleep with my slave by the way that's also a recurring motive women who don't have children making their husbands sleep with other women is a motive jacob will get that too with his two wives and of course it doesn't go right and of course that is really late on is this you can really send the family dynamics sarah says to abram you are responsible the wrong i'm doing
00:18:30 wow you can almost see genesis 3. where adam says is the woman's fault the woman you place with me so you get the first what shifting responsibility your fault you are responsible may the lord judge between you and me and of course to add spice to it we use god's name into it she did it before the lord kept me for having children now the law will judge you one thing we do with family struggles among christians that we like to pull god's name in on you why because it legitimizes our position god wants you
00:18:59 to change you got a temper you got this problem you know and abraham does the same thing like what adam does do you heard whatever you think bestow or eat apollo eat apple law so let me tell you a question who is the central character the narrative people say sarah some people say it's two sarah and hagar i suggest to use not because in this story art there's only one main character who is it is abraham so what is the text teaching us number one abraham abandoned hagar and his unborn child wow great father menu
00:19:43 this is our patriarchy you slept with a woman so that your line can continue your wife doesn't agree with it you abandon her the second thing very obviously is he abandoned his role as head of the family and we see this nowadays a lot with asians you know because asian fathers spend their time at work they keep saying or go do so many things and they have basically subcontracted the work to their wives to the mothers and i think there is a very big need now for men to reclaim their roles in the family so
00:20:23 i want to give a simple thing how much time do you spend with your children are you too busy at work are you busy do you spend time to understand them but what's quite interesting this narrative is you find another motive that occurs in genesis whenever things are done which god doesn't approve what happens is the text is silent about god you find that late on with jacob and the mother trying to deceive the father the text is silent about god why because it means you abandon seeking god in difficult family issues
00:20:56 and he adds something else you use god's name to rationalize your decision making i say this in love i think one thing we are i think this year the trend is to be vulnerable i mean uh we saw that with what uh brother samuel did with his admission on these struggles which a lot of men have we want to be vulnerable i i spend time with families and i want to say i'm not speaking to anybody in particular and i noticed one thing when families approach us in family life for help and they tell us they have this
00:21:25 struggle they're always saying the same thing they basically are saying i'm right the other side is wrong honor you go and talk to them they're basically not asking for help they're asking for what basically they want you to basically affirm their decision so when you tell them you know what what if the issue isn't your spouse what the issue isn't your children what if you have an issue you have not sought out god no honest not my problem is is there a problem tell my son to take care of me my son has a ticket on me and you will
00:22:00 say brother what did the lord saying your son has been taking good care of you too much he can't go on you need to find support with other people and then they get worked up so the question is abandonment have you abandoned god in your family dynamics and so the other thing coming out is one of the beautiful stories that goes through the new testament is god's grace extends to all those who are abandoned we have in hagar she runs away god speaks to hagar leah the unloved wife god speaks to her blesses her with
00:22:32 children tama the daughter of step daughter where husband died two husbands died and yet god allows her to have a child through very unusual ways but god's grace extends to all these people so let's go through now we learned about how the most important thing is to depend on god in your family that's the most important thing you teach your children it's great to give them good education it's good to provide a roof over the head and chinese family love to say this you know you know i suffer a lot
00:23:04 i want to make sure you don't suffer that's classic with chinese but the most important thing is children must see that you depend on the lord and when it comes to difficult decisions you don't abandon god you don't use god as a template to one your way and here the third story really picks this up in jacob itself the story is very clear because in genesis 25 23 it says this were the two sons we have here the older will serve the younger and the motive becomes front and center and of course jacob really
00:23:35 personifies this and we have studied a lot of this i preached about this in the last summer i want to just pick up a few points one is this do you face your deepest fears in your family issues or are you running from them because the story of jacob has two parts one him running the mother teaches him to run he's always running and he's a guy who can plan finally he stops running with a limp he faces front and center his deepest fear we all have fears in our families some of us we have double lives we have things we
00:24:12 keep from our spouse again this morning we want to be vulnerable and speaking of no one speaking to everyone and we're very afraid if our wives find it out or husbands finding out we will be rejected so we hide them and we put this away whenever a sermon comes and speaks about this we get uncomfortable we want to reach out and switch off the screen some of us we are very afraid of being lonely so we put devices uh in our lives sometimes we weaponize things like our health or this to ensure that our children feel so
00:24:44 guilty to take care of us because why our deepest fear is loneliness we all have that and the thing is sometimes we bury it down inside some of us have hurts you know that we bury deep inside and so what is this text saying the text is saying you have to face it but here's the good news you don't face it yourself you face it with the lord you wrestle with the lord you take it before the lord and say you know i struggle with this i i'm really fearful but lord i take it to you i wrestle with you and here's the good
00:25:17 news the good news is this genesis 31 says jacob replied i will not let you go unless you bless me what's the great news here the great news is blessings to you and your family will only come after you wrestle with god so this continues on with the story about the earlier one we had by either ishmael the idea is that god will take would test your face all the way if sarah had just wrestled and said you know i find it difficult we all have this right right now in this cmc oh families are struggling some have no money
00:25:52 some relationships are bad and it's very tempting to rationalize our way and go our way two ways to live go the way of cain go and rationalize our things hide our sins and and i hope things will go okay or you take it before the lord wrestle with the lord and says i struggle i don't know how no one else knows this my wife does this my i have a temper issue i i have a issue with my mouth i say this thing i trigger my partner i feel guilty over how i treated my children i feel sad and disappointed i
00:26:26 wrestled with this all of us out there you're watching this you have your struggle you wrestle with god you don't bury it and when you wrestle with god god will bless you that is the promise of scripture how does he do that we'll go now to this story arch and this is probably the centerpiece and the next week leon would speak on this i'm just gonna do a little bit i hope i'm not stealing his thunder and this one we're going to read a little bit okay again the motive is there let's read a bit of genesis 37
00:26:58 uh verses five to eight joseph had a dream and read it before but let's reread it when he told it to his brothers they hated him all the more they said listen to this dream i had where bunny sheaves are grain and in the field with suddenly my sheep rose and stood upright while your shields get around mine and bow down to it his brother said do you intend to reign over us will you actually rule over us the reality is reality is this arrogant young upstart immature he's speaking prophetically through the
00:27:26 spirit he his brothers will submit to him he will be king again the motive is reinforced here all the older brothers from jacob to simeon to reuben all of them and have a big family will bow literally to this young upstart again younger older brother motif now this story arch is is so long it's probably one of the most major stories why and many reasons because people think joseph basically personifies what we call is a foreshadow of jesus but the many part of the story we want to go through now we have been going through our
00:28:05 sermon series i'm going to forward it a little bit he's been sold into slavery by his brothers so that's the first thing about family dynamics you know some people say you know uh i know you don't understand my problem i can't get on my sister i can't get on my brother i can't get on with my do you know my father did this do you know my brother did this do you know my sister did this well then the question the bible says did your brother try to kill you did your brother try to sell you into slavery
00:28:35 that's how the story starts and then there's the journey of joseph into a potiphar and then through prison and then king and still hears the new story he is now from humiliation to exaltation and now he is king of course we will read it later on um the land has famine the brothers come to see the king and here's the motive and they cannot recognize the king the king king joseph their own younger brother drops hints what does he do he lines them up in the chronology of the age they still do not recognize the
00:29:12 king and then he does something he puts a test the youngest son benjamin is given five times the portion to eat when they come to meet them and to try to get food to bring back to their starving countrymen because he wants to see whether they will react the same way with favoritism the story begins with the brothers not happy because the dead had favoritism over joseph so now joseph does a test he gives five times the amount of food to benjamin five times a portion in egyptian culture is royalty and he wants to see whether
00:29:44 the brothers will start to get jealous the brothers pass the test and in the end anyway he has another test he frames benjamin for death and he says well all of you can go back with the food but benjamin will stay as a slave so here's the background the story benjamin is the youngest and jacob the father loves him deeply so basically it's payback time you know you made me a slave i'm gonna make my brother slave let's see what you guys do well this test is really revealing on family dynamics and so who steps up to the plate of all
00:30:19 people jacob this is the son who married an outsider sleeps with prostitutes was such a bad father both his sons the the lord uh took away and uh you know and then slept with daughter-in-law he is bad news so here the story is as we lead towards reconciliation with jacob it tells you about how god can change a person so read this what jacob says he's a wonderful text and jacob pleads with the king key word is the king your servant my father said to me you know that my wife bought me two sons one of them went away from me and i said
00:30:57 he has surely been taken to pieces they don't realize this joseph there i have not seen him again if you take this one from me too benjamin and harm come to him you will bring my gray head down in grave in misery that means jacob will die of sorrow if benjamin doesn't come back so jacob makes a proposal look at look at what he says so now the boy is not reversed when i go back to your servant my father and my father whose life is closely bound up with the boy's life sees that boy isn't there he
00:31:27 will die there's a repetition again he will die of sorrow your servant will bring the great head of father down to the grave install third time he mentions my father's going to die third time huh your servant guaranteed the boy's safety to my father he made a covenant if i do not bring it back to you i will bear the blame before you my father all my life what does he do he stands in the gap you read carefully you can see what gospel messages are coming out here and then he makes a plea now then please
00:31:54 let your servant remain here as my lord slave in place of the boy he puts himself on the behalf of the sins of the brothers as a sacrifice and let the boy return with the brothers how can i go back to my father if the boy is not with me do not let me see the misery that will come on my father fourth time he mentions about the father yes in one way joseph performifies jesus he is the king who rescues his people out of starvation this case he was humiliated and exalted many scholars have picked it
00:32:29 up but jacob in many ways personifies what god wants us to be who we are whether you are a jacob with a deceiver i mean joseph yes jacob the devil or judah sorry judah who is such a bad news and then now changing this is what god wants us to be who you are and who you want you to be because the story here is a story about the most critical thing in family dynamics what is that forgiveness and reconciliation because every family will have this one you know they have some member they cannot forgive they struggle
00:33:06 how do you bring about that some of us have gone through a divorce we cannot forgive our ex-partners sometimes we feel our children hurt us sometimes you think our parents hurt us i want to talk about the anatomy of reconciliation and the three things we learn from judah i'm sorry we keep using jacob's name but the key person here is judah what's anatomy a reconciliation and it's a template for us the first is empathy because judah understands the pain of the father so in any reconciliation in a family you
00:33:39 always look on the other side because we are so filled with pain now we always see our pain we never see the pain on the other side and judah looks at the pain of the father the father thought one son had died if this other son is taken away he will die of sorrow the first is empathy the second is covenant he covenanted to the father judah told the father you know what i'll bring benjamin back no matter what i will keep my word to put it in other words i will bring benjamin back even if it costs
00:34:11 my life and so god asks you today you have covenanted with him to live a certain way do you have that covenant in your family dynamics or do you only do that in church in family you will lead your family your own way two ways to live are you falling in the way of cain are you falling in the way of islam or would you wrestle with god will you not abandon god in your family issues and the last one of course is godly sacrifice isn't it he stands in the gap and says you know what don't think benjamin take me
00:34:48 and and this is not exclusive but it really shows you how we should live in families how children should be sacrificial to their parents in many ways it's about children and what happens after this the king the king weeps there's another motive he weeps privately and publicly and then he whatever you do he reveals himself you want god to reveal yourself and your family this is the way to do remember your covenant with god have empathy for your family members show sacrificial love the way christ did
00:35:21 it for us on the cross and god reveals himself to us let me end with this ephraim and mana say because most people know this story let me just tell you who they are ifram and manasi are the children of joseph they are actually half egyptian because his wife is egyptian now that's interesting because i mean israel i read this this is what you call not pure blood it's not pure or not you are you are you're not really one of us you're half egyptian and remember the israelites reading this have just come
00:35:53 out of bondage from israel from egypt so they don't really like egyptians so these two sons are half breeds all right so now this is at the end of the story and joseph is 130 years old he is about to pass away he said this when joseph saw his father sorry jacob is 130 years old and joseph brings his sons to jacob for blessings all right so jacob's 130 years old and he's about to pass so and what happens is this he breaks the two cells he takes the oldest boy and brings it towards uh jacob to be
00:36:27 blessed and then he takes the younger son later on and then jacob does something interesting he crosses his hands you know you know what he does he blesses the younger boy and here the motive is full force verse 17 when joseph saw his father placing his right hand on ephraim's head in front of the younger boy he would deplease so he took hold of his father's hand to move from ephraim's head to manasseh's head joseph said to him no my father here's the one if this one is the first born put your right hand on his head
00:36:59 he's the older boy but his father refused and said i know my son i know he too will become a people and he too will become great nevertheless and hear that motive again his younger brother will be greater than he and his descendants will become a group of nations and hebrew tells us by faith jacob when he was dying bless each of joseph's son and this was an act of worship and worship as his lien on the top of his staff now there's so many things we can learn here number one what jacob did was he
00:37:31 literally adopted the two boys to be the 12th tribe so is about adoption and who did he adopt he adopted half egyptians by the way here they are the outsiders you know and now the two half egyptians he took the younger boy and said through you the older boy will be blessed unlike isau and jacob unlike ishmael and isaac unlike cain and abel unlike joseph and the brothers where there was always tension in this story there is no tension among the brothers but the story is the younger boy will bless
00:38:09 the older boy and they are both outsiders who are now adopted into family so let me close with this i want to give you a big picture we read all of this what did this telling us and what does particularly the last story tell to us number one it tells about israel and the surrounding nations as israel is about to enter they see canaan they see all the enemies and they feel small and god tells them you are the younger brother in a sense they are bigger but you would prevail as you enter that's one
00:38:46 the second one very obviously is david david is the youngest of the sons of jesse the smallest yet god chose him to fight the philistine and to become kings and later on there are two kings saul and david and the younger man the one that doesn't look big the one that's not strong will prevail that goes on again the new testament has two sons the prodigal son and the older brother and who is really the one favored in the end the prodigal son is like judah he like jacob the deceiver who he was and who god wants him to be and it
00:39:25 ends what does the the father say bring on the sickness ring bring on the rope put him on this royalty and lastly what does it say it tells us about the church because in the book of romans we are the engrafted branch onsite i'll tell you the blessings to jerusalem the blessings to the jews will come from the church will come from the gentiles we are the youngest brother we are the engrafted branch and prophetically this is my own theology salvation to the jews will come from the gentiles we will lead the way but what am i
00:40:05 trying to tell you all of this why am i trying to say this about your family what is this identity that we have so if you're there right now and you feel that you know you're struggling through family motives family issues you feel you're struggling to family trouble how does this play your identity let me just end with the words of paul he says this first corinthians 1 25 27 but god chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise god chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong
00:40:37 later on he says the last shall be first so where is your identity your identity is in christ no matter what your family's struggles are if you're struggling with it and you feel very overburdened bring it towards god wrestle with god learn to find reconciliation why because god has chosen you even though you're weak to shame the strong what if your family dynamics are great what if you're just you're like the first born and then scripture will tell you live by grace do not be arrogant do not take it for
00:41:13 granted that you have all of this and learn to bless everybody especially during this time of the cmco with many suffering god bless you and your families and may you then be a blessing to the church and may the church be a blessing to the nations god bless you all this sunday
