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00:00:19 morning good to see everybody here well not not everybody some of us are still at home no place today we are on track we're going to the whole book of genesis this year we're going to do right up to the end uh and basically we're focusing on the life of jacob and as you can see what genesis 12 onwards does is it tracks the life of three of the patriarchs abraham now jacob and then joseph and how god's promises to to redeem the world start is incepted in chapter 12 and then how it actually grows to fruition
00:01:01 to rest of genesis so we look at jacob's dream now if you remember last week he did a nasty thing he basically swindled his brother out of a blessing and today we're going to look at the consequences of that so let's start with the word of prayer lord we ask that you speak to us today that you open up our hearts our minds to your spirit that we may see what you see and feel what you feel and that will be our driving force for the way we live we ask for jesus sake amen right so basically again to make things simple three points uh
00:01:43 for this particular passage that we learned we learned a lot about god firstly that god comes to us when we are at our lowest secondly god's blessings and promises are actually inseparable and thirdly god's transformation enables us to receive his blessings all right so let's start off with god coming to us when we are at our lowest now last time our story was left where there was great trouble after jacob had swindled his brother all hell break loose and then jake jacob had to leave he was worn by his mother to leave because
00:02:22 of the fury of his brother jacob left boshiba and went towards haran and he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set taking one of the stones of the place he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep now why was he running away if you look in chapter 27 the esau hated jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him and esau said to him self the days of mourning for my father are approaching and then i will kill my brother so that
00:02:56 actually split the family into two jacob faced great danger and the rest of the passage will describe how his mother sought to protect him go to my brother's house which is basically padamaran up north to to basically not only define a wife which part of the the people god has chosen the family god was chosen but also to escape from his brother and now he is lying under the starry sorry night that night can i have the music on please right it started out very well the plan i said someone said according
00:05:19 to plan everything fell into place he got the blessing he won the victory and yet he's alone no house no servants no money heading out running away for the rest of his life and this is the part of his life which is basically the lowest because he's alone again and i and and it seems as if if you read the bible there's so many instances in our lives well when we are lowest is when god actually comes to us some of us think that when we're up when life is good when our job doing well we got a bonus and god is
00:06:02 with us not necessarily so look at job it takes 40 chapters of suffering before god actually speaks to job 40 chapters the rest of time he lost his family he lost his wealth he lost his health look at a man born blind 40 years of his life couldn't see a single glint of light until that day when jesus touched his heart opened up his eyes the point when you are the lowest when there is no hope that's where god comes in or joseph the lowest part of his life imprisoned falsely accused by portugal and then god
00:06:42 comes into his life and i think for many of us being the lowest point of our lives is actually when god is nearest to us you see we won't listen when we're up if you look at job he says he catches the wise with their own craftiness and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end so when we're crafting when we're depending on our own wisdom and our own strengths we won't listen we only listen when we're down look at paul paul uses these words in job to describe let no one deceive himself but anyone
00:07:14 among you thinks he's wise in this age let him become a fool that he may become wise for the wisdom the world is following with god for his written he catches the wise in their craftiness and again god loans the thoughts of the wise that they are futile see salvation is proven to be unmistakably god's when it actually comes to the point where we are lowest and that our own resources are inadequate to the task look at the philippian jailer moments before he's laughing and sneering at paul and as silas as they're singing
00:07:51 hymns and songs and what this fellow are doing nowhere near salvation right but when the earthquake comes and the chains fall off he rushes in with trembling in fear he fell down before paul and silas and then he brought them out sirs what must i do to be saved see god comes to us when we're lowers and this is the lowest point of jacob's life so that when god comes to him it is unmistakable evidence of grace not that jacob deserved it but god gave him grace if you look at ecclesiastes chapter 3.
00:08:27 for this everything is a season a time for every matter under the sun under heaven time to be born a time to die a time to plant time to pluck up what is planted a time to kill a time to heal a time to break down the time to build up a time to weep a time to laugh a time to mourn and a time to dance and it would seem as if life has the storms and the quiet periods and sometimes we think in our lives that this is where we belong we belong to the in-between period and we don't want to leave that part and then we actually get
00:09:01 to a storm we start to question was the blessing real did i play by cards right was there another way and all suffering is only for bad people and am i bad that's why i'm suffering this is a interesting article about the cnn this a couple of days ago where there's a man dying called ellen crock in jean north east france he wanted to use facebook for another use he wanted to live stream his death to show the suffering and they they and he wanted uh eugene's here and his reason is that god is love and god will not let his
00:09:44 people suffer unnecessarily you see we choose to see god on our own terms that's why we cannot accept suffering and he wanted to persuade the french president to allow him to be euthanized because we see god on our own terms truly god doesn't want us to suffer isn't it suffering cannot be part of the plan now suffering shows up where our treasure is if you look in psalm 39 when you discipline a man with rebukes for sin you consume like a moth what is dear to him and surely all mankind is a mere
00:10:22 moth see when suffering comes where at the lowest point of our lives it's like a moth you go open your cupboard and suddenly your best clothes your best dress your best suit has a big hole that you can't wear and you feel devastated suffering shows where our treasure is we either get mad or we get sad if our treasure is in whatever is taken away we get mad because god must hate us or we hate him back he's not really our god we feel sad we i thought i could trust god and god has let me down say this is how satan assaults the glory
00:11:02 of god in our lives he uses either pleasure or pain when pain comes you either think god is powerless why should i worship such a god or god doesn't care for me that's why this pain has come into my life and the other thing is that he can even use pleasure because when pleasure comes god is therefore unnecessary now god's blessings and god's promises are inseparable if you look here let's read as he dreamed and behold there was a ladder set up on the earth and on top of it reached heaven and behold the angels of god were
00:11:38 ascending and descending on it and behold the lord stood above it and said i am the lord the god of abraham your father and the god of isaac the land on which you lie i will give to you and your offspring your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed behold i'm with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land
00:12:05 for i will not leave you until i've done what i've promised to you this is jacob's dreams and dreams are very important if you look into the bible there are about 130 references where god speaks to his people via dreams in fact jacob himself has eight dreams or visions or revelations of god some people said dreams are anticipation of what you want to do in the future abraham lincoln actually had a dream two weeks before he was assassinated he woke up in his room walked out wandered around his house
00:12:44 and wound up back in his room wondering why are there people crying unless he won't walk back to this room he saw a picture of himself he saw himself lying there and people crying because he was shot and sure enough two weeks later he was shot in fact the new yorker came up with the article a couple of days a couple of months ago says it is in dreams that americans are making sense of donald trump and there was a lady who collected 3 000 dreams from all people all over the country and even one of them had a dream where
00:13:21 donald trump is descending from heaven on a golden staircase and he will be here to save the world another one by a mega church pastor called tainan describes the situation when he goes to the white house and is confronted by two either security guards or they are angels they're eight foot tall and after going through layers and layers of security he finally meets president trump who has grown to eight foot tall and the refrain of the that comes out from behind is you know protect the heavenly deposit protect president
00:13:55 trump so people make try to you see when we get the situation anxiety we try to make sense of our lives and often it comes out in dreams the last time there was a huge writing of dreams was actually under hitler these are called the third reich of dreams where charlotte berat actually correlated a lot of dreams that came up in the city in the country of germany when hitler was ruling now here we have a dream and dream is of the staircase uh this ladder set up on earth and to the top of it reaching heavens
00:14:30 actually is not really a ladder you could actually translate this or interpret this as a staircase that goes up to heaven and behold uh the angels of god were ascending and sending on it basically it's the dream tells him about divine presence and mediation if you look at the staircase it's no different from in scientific terms a portal you know you see all the scientific movies you go from one dimension to another by going through a portal or if you're more simplistic if you look at cs lewis writings
00:15:02 the lion the witch the wardrobe uh lucy opens up the door and the cupboard and when you walk inside you go into another realm as it were i remember this iraqi pilot who was a patient of mine and you know he's not a christian and he actually had a very severe bladder cancer and he was supposed to be in vancouver having a surgery done sitting there because he was a canadian citizen and uh just the night before he actually had the surgery done which would have removed his bladder and replaced it with
00:15:39 bowel massive massive surgery he heard a voice and he actually had a dream and he got up in his dream to the balcony the dream said to him you know don't go for surgery tomorrow that's amazing this guy is not a christian uh i wonder who spoke to me like that i mean why is it shining what is it light and all that and he actually flew all the way back to kuala lumpur and to see me and he said look this voice told me that the cancer is gone and i come back to check so he came back we actually put a telescope in this
00:16:18 bladder and the cancer was gone absolutely gone and i can testify to her in fact i took some biopsies because i don't believe and it was gone and it would give an opportunity for him to ask me who is the fellow who told me this and it was the voice of jesus and he subsequently uh came to know christ lost his family because they are of a different religion uh and there was trouble in his life but he came to know christ and that is some of the times ago actually god speaks to us in dreams and i want to look at this very
00:16:54 carefully and behold he dreamt and behold there was a ladder set up on earth and the top of it reached to heaven the same words are used in genesis chapter 11 when they said come let us build a city and tower with the top in heaven let us make a name for ourselves you see the language is the same written by the same author trying to tell you on one way god can come to you or the other way they try to find god on their own terms there is a difference if you look at the cigarettes of that particular time they're all like
00:17:30 ladders of staircases they're all an effort for men to find god but to find god on their own terms that is the problem with with with jacob and with the rest of us we try to find god on our own terms and here we have god coming god comes and stood above it and he said i am the lord the god of abraham your father and god of isaac the one you tried to swindle very embarrassing situation there the land on which you lie i will give to you and all your offspring between the restoration of his terrible situation a restoration
00:18:11 of his fortune and if you remember isaac was a rich man i mean look at genesis 26 isaac sowed in that lamb and reaped in the same year a hundredfold the lord blessed him the man became rich and gained more and more until he became very wealthy and he had possessions and flocks and hurts and many servants so that the philistines end with him jacob lost all of that it's all under esau because esau grabbed it he may have swindled him but he had to run for his life and god is telling him you will receive it all back your
00:18:46 offspring will be like the dust of the earth and you will spread abroad to the west and to the east to the north and the south and in you and all your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed and if you look at the patriot abraham and the patriarch jacob you know when god spoke to abraham he was married and childless jacob is the worst situation when god spoke to him he was penniless he was alone unmarried and no child now the tale of two presidents now i want to talk to you about what we
00:19:25 live for you see god's promises god's blessing comes in the terms of promises promises are something that sometimes you can't touch you can't feel you can't grab i was very interesting article last week uh in the atlantic where president trump very embarrassed because many of his aides shared that when you're supposed to visit a world war one grave in france he said he wanted to go because the whole grave is full of losers losers are people who die for their country they're suckers and then while he was
00:19:59 the story was told in this article of when he was at the gravesite with his then chief of staff john kelly whose son was an officer who was killed in a war he looked at john kelly and he said to him you know i don't get it what was it what was it in for them i mean which means the guy is dead your son is dead why did he do it what was it in it for him and that's the kind of transactional i mean it's very natural for trump to say that because he's like a lot of people in fact some americans get very upset about trump but they
00:20:36 don't realize that trump is actually a symptom of their country's disease trump is not the cause of your pain trump is your worst nightmare come rail because the country is like that he's just reflecting a portion of the population when you become transactional in your life the previous president was great i was watching a movie on his last year in office and he was in vietnam and when vietnam was lead he was actually meeting with a bunch of young people who were basically leaders there are teenagers the best and
00:21:08 brightest and then one of the vietnamese students stood up and said look we are leaders but you are a great leader how can you teach us how to be great leaders obama talked for a while and he said sometimes we think people are incentivized by concrete things like money and power but sometimes people are also incentivized by a good story which means it's not something you touch and feel you know it's a good story and we in america we have a good story we have a declaration of independence in which we
00:21:40 declare that all men are created equal and endowed by the creator with inalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness we all obama said we all need a larger narrative of life beyond the concrete terms of what i did for me power and money to live to become great to become what we actually are meant to be but the trouble is the movie that chronicled the last year of obama's presidency had focused on john kerry stephanie powers ben rhodes and obama how they tried to change the world you should see their face when
00:22:24 trump won the election long dropped to the floor all their dreams were shattered and actually trump reversed a lot of what they did and is still trying to reverse it that's the trouble it's okay to have a good story but it won't last we actually have a wider story you know what our story is it's told to apostle john revelations chapter nine seven after this i looked and we hauled a great multitude that no one could number from every nation from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before
00:23:01 the throne before the lamb clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice salvation belongs to our god who sits on the throne and to the lamb you see that's a vision that will come true that's the largest story for which we should focus our lives on you know there's some billionaires who have done that in terms of living beyond themselves not just a concrete wall the money i have you have look at bill gates and melinda and warren buffett they've given a large portion of
00:23:37 their wealth to a course larger than themselves after all they got all the money and all the the power the only thing i'm disappointed with is the guy we give a lot of money to jeff bezos 160 billion and he only gives 0.09 of his wealth now if you don't give your wealth away what happens is that your wife has a big smile because you got 38 billion reward divorce and the lesson is what you don't give away will be taken away either your wife takes it away or when you die god takes it away you see you have to learn to live for a
00:24:15 bigger cause if you look at the in the scheme of genesis there are promises given to abraham land in chapter 13 and land and nation promise in 15 and 17 and then chapter 22 and that land nation blessings and in chapter 21 isaac is born that's a tangible evidence of the blessing of the promise and then chapter 23 abraham dies and his blessing is actually what the promise because he only got a plot of land the only plot of land is the cave and if you look in jacob's life when he died his most of his family were
00:24:55 living where egypt and he came back to one miserable plot of land and so god's blessings and god's promises are actually inseparable the blessing is the promise and to be able to enable and appropriate that blessing you actually have to learn to believe in that promise have faith in that promise and appropriate the entailments of that promise into your life otherwise your life has no meaning why do we have soaring dreams martin luther king you know wishing or praying and dreaming about equality or elon musk who
00:25:34 wants to basically reach for the skies you see because god has put eternity in the hearts if you look ecclesiastes chapter 3 the same chapter what gained is the worker from his toil i've seen the business that god has given to the child children of men to be busy with he has put everything beaut he made everything beautiful in his time and also he has put eternity into the hearts of men's hearts see we reach for the skies we want to live for larger story because god has put eternity in our hearts and if we don't live for
00:26:08 that vision we will never be satisfied uh chapter 28 verse 15 and and god says to abraham to jacob behold i'm with you and will keep you and wherever you go and we'll bring you back to this land for i will not leave you until i've done what i've promised you and here he promises jacob it doesn't matter about the land you see the blessing is i'm going to be with you you're going to see tangible evidence the fact i'm going to be with you i'm going to bring you all the way wherever you go it doesn't depend on
00:26:46 promised land anymore it depends on my promise presence in your life and so therefore we have a choice to take god's promises to us today as his blessing do we live do we live like president trump and ask what's in it for me or do we live for a larger dream which god puts in our hearts which is the dream that one day we will walk hand in hand with every race on the face of the earth on all peoples all tribes and be part of the larger mission to bring the gospel to bring life to the world lastly god
00:27:32 transforms us to receive his blessings he doesn't just dump the blessing on you you need to be transformed and you look at jacob's response it's transactional if you look at jacob made a vow look if god will be with me then will keep me in the way that i should go and give me a bread to eat and clothing to wear so that i come again to my father's house and then god shall be my god and in this stone which i've set up for a pillar shall be god's house and of all that you give me i will give you one tenth oh
00:28:10 very generous right if god you see it's transactional if you look at god what he says and you put jacob what he says next to each other god says the land of which you lie i will give to your offspring your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth you shall spread abroad to the west to the east and north your offspring shall be all the families on earth be blessed behold i am with you and will keep you wherever you go i will bring you back to this land i will not leave you until i've done what i promised
00:28:51 unconditional isn't it you look at jacob's son if god will be with me then god shall be i will give you 10 sounds like a dealer a bill project isn't it and you give back kick back 10 right and the guy actually gives you all and you kick back 10 very very bigger and jacob's response is self-centered you look at his response you know jacob's expectations of god's promises if god will be with me give me food good food beef noodle outside today clothes and i return safely to my father's house he's not interested in the bigger vision
00:29:36 and his promises god will be my god recognition his house etc you see how god will use him as a blessing to others the land for his offspring austria spread like dust it's a blessing to the whole families he's not interested all that not important jacob is like a trump man you know what's in it for me i can see i can feel i can touch that's what i'm interested in he's not interested in the bigger picture his response is self-centered and he's also presumptuous and manipulative you think you're 10
00:30:07 very bigger i think often we come to god and we promise him our ten percent or our commandment it actually betrays the sense that we are presumptuous and manipulative as if your ten percent will coerce god to do things for you i not very much different when i was in tokyo some time ago so i think eden will recognize this temple all right in tokyo yeah and then you very interesting the japanese people and if you go inside you can see things like this ah if you want good health it's only 500 yen which is like malaysian ringgit
00:30:46 like what 30 something like that and and if you want uh a traffic safety because tokyo is a real difficult place to navigate it's 1 000 yen if you want education and learning only 500 your past exam thousand yen now that one always it's gets it's a transactional kind of thing that you give god something then god will give you something else it's very natural if you look at the story of jesus and the ten lepers in luke chapter 17 remember ten lepers and and being a leper they're basically totally ostracized
00:31:20 nobody wants to look and you see you know a guy with a leprosy all the his nose hanging off and all the skin lesions you run away it totally ostracized and they were crying out and crying out and then jesus came and jesus actually healed all 10 of them but you know what only one came back you see all of them had a surface need all of them were sick ostracized at the lowest point of their lives that's a surface need loneliness anxiety illness but only one came back and the fellow came back was a samaritan he wasn't even
00:31:59 a jew the surface need is designed to point you to a deeper need a real need and that real need is for a savior and the problem is we are also focused on our surface needs because you know why our faith is like jacob is transactional it's like trump what's in it for me and once that surface deep is met i don't have to go back because i got what i wanted right and the trouble is you missed the point the point is that the surface needs points to the real need sometimes we are so distracted by our surface needs
00:32:38 that the this perseveration and the focus on surface needs so fills our life that we fail to see the direct need of our lives you look at the parable of the story of the feeling of five thousand and here we have jesus giving free buffet lunch twenty five thousand men you count the women and children it comes about twenty thousand john chapter six so they all came they have big markers like buffet until so much left behind and then this is what jesus said truly i say to you you are seeking me not because you saw the signs
00:33:14 because your heart you ate your fill of the loaves the people were there you know what they are interested like what's in it for me because they wanted to fill their stomachs and he said to them do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures the eternal life which the son of man will give to you for on him the father has set a seal jesus is saying you came here for the makkah and i i want you to look deeper something else deeper and he said then i am the bread of life whoever comes to me
00:33:46 shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall not thirst but the trouble is they didn't want that if you look at their lives and many of them heard it they said this is a hard saying who can listen to it after this many of the disciples turned away and no longer walk with him 20 000 people there how many left behind 12 very poor church person right if i have a pastor martial like that only 12 left you're a big rally you fed so many people spend quality oriented we speed 20 000 people only 12 came back we are total
00:34:20 failure all right or look at what ff bruce wrote what they wanted he would not give and what he offered they would not receive see that's the problem with the world that we face today that we the surface needs that we have what we need from god either the exam or or basically the illness to be healed all that can actually be a distraction so that the real need for which the surface need points to is actually causing is missed and you're distracted what about the story in john 11 about lazarus who was healed he
00:35:03 found that jesus found out someone told him that lazarus was sick very badly ill probably had a heart attack or something all right and and uh jesus didn't go immediately you see jesus loved martha and sister lazarus and when he heard the lazarus was ill he stayed two days longer in the place that he was if jesus loved you he'll stay back longer he won't come immediately right imagine you had a doctor in subang like that if i love you a lot church member first baptist church oh i think i wait two
00:35:34 more days and i'll see you non-church member i come straight away why did he say that why did he actually purposely wait two more days and when he actually came out martha said to jesus lord if you had been here my brother would not have died that means you came too late ah isn't it you came too late you should have come earlier and then jesus told them lately lazarus has died and for your sake i'm glad i'm not there that you may believe then let's go to him so jesus actually reveals the reason
00:36:10 why he actually delays because he actually the outcome was just lesser is going to die and that belief in him is more important than our health our wealth our well-being when jesus heard it he said this illness does not lead to death it is for the glory of god so that god the son of god may be glorified through it you see god's motives in the things that actually happen in our lives are different from our motives we are so focused on our transactional needs and our surface needs and that actually distracts us
00:36:45 from the real need the real need in our lives is the larger picture that the son of god may be glorified we actually have a transactional faith or transformational faith and although jacob starts off with a transactional faith he has got to move to a transformational state and for us as a church we need to do that i remember the only reason why i went to christian gatherings when i was 17 years of age because scripture union meetings always had makan i'm there for the makkan as a fact because of the makkah i became
00:37:17 a christian that's right it's called a rice christian didn't it anytime you want to have a picture you have free makkana they all come but somewhere down the line the surface needs actually point to the real needs that's why people ask me why this church gives so much free food i'm not interested in the money the money god can always give because he owns the cattle on a thousand hills i'm interested all the fellas who come for the surface need one day a couple of them will see their real need and that soul is more valuable to me
00:37:52 than all the money you can spend that is the real motive now the danger of a transactional faith it is dangerous in the world we live in a world where everybody is saying what's in it for me because paul wants timothy understand this in the last days there will come times of difficulty where people will be lovers of self lovers of money and if you go right down the last verse in chapter four treacherous reckless swollen we concede lovers of pleasure rather than the lovers of god we live in a world today
00:38:27 where everybody is saying what's in it for me and that's a transactional kind of and it's dangerous this is justin rosenstein who basically we watched that uh very good documentary recently called the social dilemma he is actually an inventor of the like button how many of you know what the like button is oh nobody goes on facebook yeah the like button is one of the most powerful inventions in the world why is it powerful it's powerful because when people like you happy right ah so when you like me i have to like you
00:39:03 back right right and then if you go on to a few days without any likes you feel what's wrong with me and basically the whole aim the game is to get you addicted to the screen and and actually he said this is one of the 50 people who invented all the social media in the world today that captivates and glues us on to the screen and he says we live in a why is the environment degrading because because we live in a world where a dead whale is worth more than a live one we live in a world where dead trees are worth more
00:39:36 than a live one we live in a world where fake news spread six times faster the real news that's why and you know why because our when you come to social media our attention can be mine we're more profitable to the corporation staring at a screen at an ad for hours that going out to living our lives see ai is good we all talk about ai right the problem with ai is the purpose for which ai is designed if the design is to mine money from you then you're finished in fact they said if you go on the website today
00:40:12 and if you don't have to pay for the product you are the product behind you when you look at the screen young people you look at your your your smartphones behind the screen are thousands of very very smart engineers and super computers taking everything that you are and using it for monetary purposes why because we live in a world where men are lovers of self we live in a world where everyone is transactional in fact it's come into the christian religion as well apostle leroy thompson says of jesus jesus took your place on
00:40:53 in poverty so you can take his place in prosperity prosperity wow paula white who is basically the pastor for trump president trump is this on her website you know if you can buy some communion things from her or give money for passover he will assign you a angel to yourself be an enemy to your enemies give you prosperity take sickness away give you a long life and bring increase in your inheritance wow all you have to do is click and that's it see do we have a transactional faith look in our own
00:41:33 lives are we angry or disappointed with god when things don't go our way in our prayer life dominated by this our needs i think you should actually video you know audio tape your your prayer life if it's all the time on what you need and you really don't spend time on in basically worshiping and basking in who he is then it might be a transactional faith or our commitment is leveraged to fulfilling our desires god if you if you give me a raise in my job then i'll go to church you know if you make that most beautiful
00:42:16 girl fall in love with me i promise i give you ten percent sometimes our commitment is leveraged to fulfill our desires or guilts you ever wonder if something bad happens to you that means you haven't done something right or you think god demands excellence in all things and you beat yourself up uh you're doing instead of being or faith becomes a tool yes have you seen people who come to church and say i'm believing god for a raise i'm believing god but my son will god seven days hey you're believing very big dealer
00:42:54 you see you're believing your faith is such a big deal god isn't a big deal anymore it's your faith it's a big deal listen to your friends in church the moment is i'm believing god for this and you know the followers have got a transactional faith because it is the faith that's important not the god you see i mean so and it all assumes you have a co-equal relationship with god where god needs something from you and you can get something back from him and that's wrong in fact there was a interesting uh pastor who actually said
00:43:29 when someone asks you how are you you know how we should answer we should answer is better than i deserve because you're a sinner horrible sinner stinking sinner deserving death in hell and whatever happens to me god has treated me better than i deserve and that actually puts us in our place so jacob begins to put down a marker he made a vow if god will be with me and keep me in this way and that i go and give me bread to eat and clothing to wear and so that i become come again to my father's house and
00:44:00 peace and then god shall be my god and this stone which i've set up for a pillar shall be god's house and all that you give me i will give a full tenth to you and here is a picture of bethel a special place he calls it the bethel which is the house of god and and he transforms him god goes with him up to his uncle's place he falls in love with a beautiful rachel i said rebecca rebecca and basically he goes through a tough time because if you think jacob is a nasty scoundrel you should meet his uncle
00:44:38 laban is far worse ten times worse than jacob and instead of marrying the woman he loves which is basically rebecca or rachel sorry i'm getting all wrong rachel rebecca all the hours all right getting old uh he actually winds up he's supposed to work seven years to marry rachel and he winds up on wedding night the same trick he played on his brother his uncle played on him you know what he did for his brother he went to his father and he dressed up as his brother so the father felt his hairy skin oh i
00:45:15 give you the blessing actually he gave the blessing to jacob instead he tricked his father he swindled his brother so at the same night wedding night he made love to the wrong woman i could not understand how that would happen maybe switch off the lights on her and say no lights okay hey in those days they got torched right so i don't understand how you could make love to the wrong woman after you wait seven years or more you go and so that was exactly the same trick his uncle played on him that he played
00:45:48 on his father and you can see how god has a wonderful sense of humor isn't it and then to really have the woman he really loved you what another seven years and on top of that to have the wealth to bring back to show his father he has to work another 71 or 20 years but god taught him that you cannot have a transactional faith because if you want to transact i'm clever that you god showed that there are a lot of people who are cleverer than you if you think you can win you cannot win and then he wrestles with god and
00:46:26 brother david adams will be sharing with us in two weeks and on that and how god has dealt with him and that and finally you've gone to genesis chapter 35 jacob comes back to the promised land transform humbler understanding what god is and he actually reconciles with esau finally and in chapter 25 god speaks again to jacob arise and go up to bethel remember the same place bethel house of god and dwell there make an altar to the to god who appeared to you when you fled from your brother esau so jacob said to
00:47:06 his household and all who were with him put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your governments unless arise and go up to battle so that i may make an altar to the lord who answered me on the day of my distress and had been back with me wherever i've gone so he's going back to the same place under the starry starry night he's going back there and that altar that that stone becomes an altar so battle that place is about transformation where the place becomes a shrine
00:47:36 a stone becomes an altar a fugitive becomes a pilgrim a pilgrim becomes a patriarch the patriarch becomes a nation a nation becomes the kingdom of god later on it all starts the starry starry night where he made that one little commitment and god came to him today i'm going to come to us and end with a challenge the challenge is to make it to make jacob's dream our reality if you look there's also jesus and jesus said to his disciples truly i say to you you will see heaven open and the angels of
00:48:18 god descending ascending and descending on the son of man and now jesus says you know the dream that your forefather had jacob he had a dream where there was a staircase you know the state case that's me that's me thousands of years later on the portal is not a cupboard the portal is the person of jesus christ and if you go back to battle do you don't you don't know that battle got two names one is the house of god bethel the other one is called beth haven the house of nothingness hosea renamed it the house of nothingness
00:49:02 you see this can be a house of god or house of nothingness but it depends on your response you know there's such a big hammering for people who have been suppressed in america it's black lives matter i will end with the story of two black women one lived in bed el the other one live in bedhaven one is her name is harriet tubman and that she's probably gonna be the first black woman black person who's gonna have a face on the currency and she writes every great dream begins with a dreamer always remember you have within your the
00:49:44 strength the patience the passion to reach for the stars to change the world harriet tubman was a person who had recurrent dreams also and god spoke to her in dreams and she actually came to have these dreams because she had somebody had thrown something at her and then it hit her head she sustained the brain injury and she sustained a condition called hypersomnolence which is always falling asleep and in their sleep god often spoke to her in fact god spoke to her as a slave that you should escape
00:50:16 and she followed the dream she actually escaped what she was caught but she tried again and the next time she actually succeeded walking 90 miles through the forest to victor's freedom and she spent the rest of her life you know what she was doing she was actually organizing repeated trips back to the south to save she personally saved 70 slaves she organized and helped slave in total 19 trips down there and slave so i saved a total of 300 slaves in fact when they actually had the emancipation bill where actually
00:50:55 when the congress actually declared that slaves were equal and free and people were celebrating she wasn't celebrating you know why she said i saw that in a dream two years ago i celebrated two years ago i'm not celebrating now she walked very close with god the other one is mariah carey must be the mco man whitney houston sorry yeah i was watching america yesterday anyway so whitney houston is probably the was probably the first black and most successful singer in their history she actually amassed a fortune of 450
00:51:40 million dollars in those days which is huge if you look at her life she also had a dream when she was a teenager she actually came from a church her mother was a gospel singer very famous gospel thing who actually never made it to the big leagues but brought her up well and and and she described the the film that actually inspired her the film's name is called sparkle it is a bunch about three sisters who actually aspired to stardom a couple of them made it but one of them had drug abuse and had a problem and she
00:52:16 wanted to be like them and she actually yes she did she became a star but she lived for herself and she was she wanted addicted to drugs and years later on this is her picture before she was found in her bathtub overdosed and dead she left a legacy what was her legacy her daughter at 21 also died of a drug overdose you see you can have bad hell a house of god when you live for the larger picture you when you say look it's not what's in it for me when you recognize that god's blessing is the promises for which you live
00:53:04 and appropriate in your lives and you live for a blessing you live for a larger vision or you could be like whitney houston when you live for yourself every moment for yourself and you wind up with nothing and that's a challenge for us today the only way you're going to make a difference between bad l and bad haven is through that one dream jesus christ take him into your life live for him desire him let him satisfy you and you will live in battle will this end with the last song can i have the team up please
00:54:07 [Music] [Music] so [Music] the sun we will i [Music] is [Music] is [Music] captioning not available [Music] under the brilliance of the sunshine it lights our paths clears out clouds fills our lives with joy we are enchanted by the moonlight we are enthralled by the unimaginable splendor the stars that adorn our night sky and yet jesus is brighter jesus shines purer then all the stars and angels the heavens can possibly master because he is that bridge he is that staircase he is that ladder he comes into our empty
00:56:44 uninspired lives he comes into our pain he touches our soul and becomes our glory suddenly everything we treasure everything we hope for our ambitions our dreams our worries our pains are all swept away because of who he is you might be lying there on your hospital bed i know some of you are wrecked with pain in the middle of night you're thinking about your divorce or your marriage being torn apart by conflict or you're perhaps wallowing in guilt because of your greed or your pain you cannot see
00:57:25 the glory you cannot touch the glory in your heart because every time your hands reach out and try to grasp this glory it slips from you through your hands until jesus comes into your life and suddenly he is your glory he is your joy he feels the gap between what you are where you are and where you want to be there's only one bridge there's only one staircase there's only one link to the father and that's jesus it's because he took our place our sin our pain and we took his glory into our life so
00:58:03 let's sing of his glory let us sing together you are my soul's glory [Music] we all raise our hands you're my soul's glory oh my soul's glory your of my souls [Music] glory [Music] [Applause] joy [Music] all nations [Music] [Applause] [Music] glory [Music] [Music] forever [Music] forever you
