Amen. Amen. We have witnessed it. Amen. Would you thank them one more time for us, for leading us in worship? Love you guys. Thank you so much. And You can have a seat. It is good to be with you today. I'm Angela bi. I have the amazing privilege of being the campus pastor at the Grants Trail campus in South County. So let me start by love bombing them. I love you Grants Trail. I'll be back with you next week. Um, it's good that you loaned me to Chesterfield today. Thank you. Also wanna say hi to those who are watching online and those at Mid Rivers and Fenton as we all join together today to hear God's word. Well, we're continuing this series that we've been in called My Second Chance. And one thing I just love about the Bible is that as we read these stories, as we look at God's interaction with mankind, we can learn a lot about mankind. We learn a lot about human nature. And sometimes it's a little humbling because we see that we haven't progressed that much. We still kind of have the same issues, the same problems that some of them had back then. And so we can learn a lot just about our human nature. We can also learn a lot about God, about his character, about who he is, about what he's like, as we see how he interacts, as he, as he responds, as he draws near to people. And then we can learn a lot about ourselves individually. I learn a lot about myself when I slow down and I put myself in the story. I often recognize myself in characters of the story or situations that they're dealing with in the story. And I learn a lot about myself. So today we're gonna look at a story from the Old Testament about two brothers who had an intense sibling rivalry. Uh, before we do that, why don't you pray with me and let's invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us. Uh, Jesus, we thank you so much that you said when we're together, you're with us. You're in our midst. So acknowledge that you're with us right now. So by the power of your Holy Spirit, God, would you speak a strong word to each one of us? I pray that the the stress we walked in here with or what waits us when we leave, will be put aside and will be fully present to you, fully present to your word, fully present to what you say. So we invite you to speak to us, and we pray all this in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Well, it may come as news to you or a surprise to you that sibling rivalry is alive and well, we're still dealing with it today. And it starts at a very young age. If you're not convinced of that and you don't believe it, watch this. Why crying? I don't like you. Why? 'cause he's so. You wanna throw 'em away? Yeah. Brittany, Hugs again. Big, big hugs. Give hugs to Eden and Sexton. Stop, stop, stop. You gotta be quiet when I singing in the notes singing Nelly, I hear you singing Nelly. Nelly. What? Ah, that just doesn't get old. Now, if we're finding ourself in stories, you may find yourself as which one of those you know, we, we kind of know who we are. So sibling rivalry is alive and well at a very young age. We're gonna look at these two brothers all the way back in Genesis. Uh, it starts in chapter 25, who had sibling rivalry, even younger than this. So you have, um, Isaac and Rebecca who are married and longing for a child, and it's not happening. And finally she becomes pregnant with twins. And here's what it tells us. The two children struggled within her womb. So she asked the Lord about it. Why is this happening to me? And the Lord told her, the sons in your womb will become two nations. From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals. One nation will be stronger than the other, and your older son will serve your younger son. Now, in the ancient world, back in this time, that is a huge big deal, even scandalous because the older son was always the one who got the authority. They're the ones who later would receive the inheritance and would become the leader of the family and their father's place. And so here it looks like God is flipping the script and telling Rebecca, actually what's gonna happen here is the olders gonna serve the younger. And so Esau is born first. The brother, Esau, he's the oldest now, but Jacob who came second, the twin, it says, was literally grasping his heel, his brother's heel as he was born. And so he gets the name Jacob, which literally means heel, grasper or deceiver. And for many years, for a long time, Jacob's gonna live up to that name, to that title. Now already, I think we can find ourselves in this story, some of us, because names have been spoken over us, nicknames, maybe labels because of something, some mistake maybe we made in the past, maybe from a season in our life that we would really like to shake. But that name has stuck. The label has stuck. Well, the good news this morning is, um, what was true about you or maybe what is true about you does not have to define you forever. And we'll get back to that. But first, let's go back to this birth order thing. How the, the older place there had significance. Did you know that psychologists tell us today that your birth order where you were born in your family, um, has an impact on your personality or, or on your life? We may know that we may not. So let's start with this. We love to talk to each other here. So talk to the people around you a little bit. Very innocent question, where are you in that order? Oldest, middle, youngest only child. And how do you think that's impacted your life? Okay. Okay. So hopefully you see yourself somewhere there. Um, sometimes it gets a little complicated because you could be the youngest or the oldest and then families blend together and your resistant changes. So it's not always that easy. But let's take a look at what the psychologists say, how it impacts, how it impacts us. So you may find yourself in one or more of these. So oldest achiever, leader, responsible, motivated. Now I didn't put this, the psychologist did. Bossy. Bossy. Okay, so some famous examples of oldest are Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, Beyonce, and Tom Cruise. Okay, so middle children. Who are the middle children in the room? Here we go. That's me. So I have three sisters. There's four girls in my family, and there's an older and a younger. And the two of us in the middle called each other big middle and little middle. So I'm the little middle. And so here's what it says about middle children, adaptable, independent people pleasers tend to build deep relationships. We have Miley Cyrus for the football fans, um, who join me, Peyton Manning, Michael Jordan, princess Diana and John Legend were middle children. Okay? What about what we call the baby the youngest social charming? Just ask them. They'll tell you. Outgoing, uncomplicated. I don't know about that one. But anyway, uncomplicated. They say My little sister's probably watching, so she knows. Um, okay, examples. Um, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael B. Jordan from Black Panther. And then there's an only child category. They tend to be confident, responsible. They're used to be in the center of attention, normally mature for their age. Um, this is Adele, Daniel Ratcliffe, Robin Williams, examples of that. So tell me which position you think has been the most. US presidents. Middle, middle, the middle ones. Uh, we have the mo are the most US presence. 14 of our s were the oldest. 23 were middle children. Seven were the youngest, and four were only children. Okay, so back to our story about these brothers, Jacob and Esau. So these brothers are born, one grasping to the other. But it turns out that these twins were as different as night and day. So Esau the oldest, he was an outdoorsman. He was rugged. The Bible describes him as red maybe because he was out in the sun of lot, a lot. He was a skilled hunter. Uh, loved being outside. Jacob was a homebody. He liked being inside. So these siblings were as different as night and day. And then it tells us this about their family. Isaac loved Esau because he enjoyed eating the wild game. Esau brought home, but Rebecca loved Jacob. This is a problem. We would send this family to counseling because favoritism always causes fractions. And so you have these brothers that already have a lot going against them. They're very different from each other. Probably weren't great playmates to each other when they were younger. Probably didn't hang out with the same, uh, friends in high school as different as night and day. So it comes to a time when Esau comes in from hunting and he is famished starving. And it turns out that at the same time, Jacob has cooked this delicious stew. And so, uh, Esau comes to his brother and he says, give me some of that stew. I'm dying of hunger. I'm famished. Jacob the manipulator, deceiver sees an opportunity and he goes, okay, yeah, you can have a cup of this stew if you trade your birthright for it. If you sell me your birthright, you can have this stew. Now the birthright was a really important thing because what this meant, it always went to the oldest son and this had material inheritance. He always got double. The portion of all the other kids, the oldest son did. It meant, um, he was gonna take the father's place and headship when the father passed away. And it was also connected to this covenant promise that God had made his people that passes on to this son. And so this is a big deal. And Esau is so hungry and so shortsighted that just to appease his hunger in that moment, he takes the deal and he says, okay, give me the stew. I give you my birthright. And so, um, time goes on and dad is getting older and is going blind. So Isaac decides it's time for me to give the blessing to Esau. I need to give him my blessing. Now, blessing was different from the birthright. The birthright was all about possession, property position. The blessing was more spiritual. This was a, a word, a prophetic word that the father spoke over his oldest son that the Holy Spirit would guide him in giving and God would honor this. Just had, uh, generational significance to it. And so Isaac calls his son to him and he goes, I think it's time for us to prepare for me to give you this blessing. You go out and hunt and cook a meal and bring it to me and I'm gonna bless you. So Esau does that. He goes out to hunt. Well, in the meantime, Rebecca, the mom heard the plan. And now before we're too hard on Rebecca, let's remember that she heard God say the younger was gonna, the older was gonna serve the younger. She knows that God intends to flip the script. And it could be that panic overtook her. And she was like, this is not about to go the way God said it was supposed to go. So many of us may find ourselves in her place and think, I gotta make it happen. It's up to me. Now, I've gotta take matters into my own hands. God, you've had your, you've had your time, you've had your choice. I need to take it from here. Maybe that's what was happening in her mind, but whatever it was, she decides that the way it's about to go is not gonna happen. And so she calls her son Jacob in and she goes, all right, here's what we need to do. Uh, you need to go get goat skin and put on your arms. 'cause your brother's very hairy and you're not. I'm gonna quickly prepare a meal and I'm gonna send you in to your father with this meal. And we're gonna trick him into thinking he's blessing your brother. So Jacob goes along with the plan. It goes into his father, his father's a little cautious, leery in the beginning, but then he gives Jacob the blessing. Now it's a fairly long blessing, but, but here's what it says. At the very end, may many nations become your servants, and may they bow down to you. May you be the master over your brothers. And may your mother's sons bow down to you. And this is a blessing that he gave, thought he was giving Esau and he was saying it over Jacob. So Esau comes in, he's hunted, he's cooked, he comes to his father, ready for his blessing. And this is the moment that father and son realize they've been deceived. It's been stolen. Now, I don't know if we can fully understand what has been lost here. I mean, the best we can probably understand is this, someone came to your parents and tricked them and took your entire inheritance away. It's a little bigger than that, but that's what we can relate to. This has been stolen from him. And Esau is devastated, angry, hurt. The Bible says that from this time on, he hated his brother. And so he vows, once my father is dead, I'm gonna kill my brother. That's how much I hate him. Now he has stolen from me and I'm gonna kill him. Well, Rebecca again hears about this and says to Jacob, you need to run for your life. And he does. For 20 years now, Jacob lives in exile. Now the name deceiver or deceived plays out. We're not gonna go through all that. But in his life, he is, he continues to deceive and he is deceived many times. And so, but in the midst of that 20 years, he manages to build a life for himself. He has a family. He gathers wealth with herds and cattle and uh, he's, he's really built a life for himself. But then there comes this moment when something feels unfinished, not quite right. And God says to him, you need to go home. You need to go back to the place of conflict, back to the place of rupture, back to the brother. You betrayed, it's time to go home. So in preparation for that, what Jacob does is he sends messengers to his brother ahead and he says, I, this is where I've been living. This is what my life has been like. This is the life I've built for myself. I have a family, I have children. I've gathered wealth. I've done really well. I wanna come home. I'm coming home. So he sends these message ahead and, and the message he has is, I'm sending these messengers and hope that you'll be friendly to me. Um, I think my interpretation of what he's saying there is, please don't kill me. I'm coming home. Please don't kill me. I hope you're not angry anymore. So the messengers go, they deliver the message to Esau, and then they come back to Jacob and they say, we've delivered the message to your brother. And, uh, he's actually on his way now to meet you. And by the way, he's got 400 men coming with him. And Jacob panics and he goes into control mode. How am I gonna manage my brother's anger now? So he decides to take his family and his herds and his cattle and his flocks, and he divides 'em into two groups. And his plan is, I'm gonna send this group first, and if they get attacked, at least this group can escape. And so this is the plan he puts in place, divides 'em all up. He even sends gifts ahead and droves to his brother trying to appease his brother's anger. And then well, then he prays. So it might've been time to do that earlier. But then he prays this beautiful prayer, and at the end of it, he says this, oh Lord, please rescue me from the hand of my brother Esau. I'm afraid that he's coming to attack me along with my wives and children, but you promised me I will surely treat you kindly and I will multiply your descendants until they become as numerous as the sands along the seashore. Too many to count. So the night before this meeting is gonna happen, Jacob is alone. And the Bible tells us that he has an encounter. And it says, a man came to him. Now, scholars believe that this was possibly an angel, maybe God himself who comes to Jacob. It could be, we don't know. It could be Jesus who comes to him in, in the flesh, whoever it is. What we know is this night Jacob has an encounter with God. And it says that they wrestled all night long. Jacob wrestled with God all night long. Now, some of us know what it's like to wrestle all night long because we often wrestle all night long with fear or anxiety or dread or regret. We lose sleep. We lose a night because we're wrestling with that. Well, Jacob wrestles all night long, not just physically, but this is a spiritual battle in the life of Jacob because what's happening is he's wrestling between who he has been and who he is becoming. And at the end of that night, he's clinging to God and he says, I will not let you go until you bless me. Now already he has manipulated to get the blessing of his earthly father. And now he's asking his heavenly Father asking him for a blessing. And God starts with this, what is your name? And he says, Jacob. And then the Lord says, your no, your name will no longer be Jacob. From now on you will be called Israel because you have fought with God and with men and have won Jacob the deceiver, Israel, the one who wrestles with God. Now wrestling with God. We all know, right, that God could have quickly overwhelmed Jacob, but he allows him to wrestle. But what this says is that Jacob stayed in the wrestling, he stayed, he overcame maybe the, the urge to leave, the urge to let it go, but he wrestles through. And by renaming Jacob, what God is doing is he's giving him a new identity. You're no longer gonna be deceiver. This is no longer gonna define you. So I wonder if there are times where we've avoided wrestling with God, where we would rather ignore the things that we need to talk God about. We ignore bringing him in, being honest about where we've been, being honest about who we have been. Do we, do we avoid coming near to God? So if he asked you, what is your name? What is the title? What, what role have you been living out? What role defines you back then, what would your answer be? I i think for many of us, the answer would be something like cheater liar. One who abandoned addicted gossiper, one who divides friends, angry, selfish. What is the name that has defined you before, maybe the label you'd love to shake? Well, the good news is that God has a new name for you. He has a new identity for you. But it will most likely, um, include some wrestling with him, some being honest, no longer running away and coming to him and saying, who I have been is no longer who I want to be. As we draw near to him, I wonder if one of the things that keeps us from letting God be near being honest and sometimes that being honest with God, we call confession God. I wanna be honest about my part. Sometimes we call it repentance. I'm ready to turn from who I have been and be the person you created me to be. And sometimes what keeps us from facing our past or what we have done or our regret is our image of God is distorted. We don't fully understand who God is. It makes me think, uh, years ago, my daughter and her family got a dog. They adopted, they rescued a dog. And um, I, her little 3-year-old son, they were having to teach him how to be with the dog because, you know, he wanted to pull the ears and poke the eyes and pull the tail and lay on the dog. And um, when he would come into the room, the dog would cower like there he is. And uh, they had to teach him how to, how to respond to the dog. But in the beginning it was a little rough. Um, and the dog would cower and hide for a while. They're best of friends now. But for a while it was a little rough. But let me just give you an image of the boy and the dog. So this is the boy and the dog. Now, honestly, at that time, if you had asked my grandson, who's bigger, you or the dog, he would've said, well, me, if you said, who's stronger, you or Apollo, he'd say, me, I'm bigger. I'm stronger. Because that's the role that he played. This is like, so the dog, we all know, right? The dog could have taken the boy out in two seconds. We know that, but he didn't. He allowed that relationship to form. Well, this is what was happening with God and Jacob as they wrestled. God could have overpowered him at any time, but it was important for them to hang in there and to wrestle through that. So the brothers are gonna meet. Jacob went on ahead. As he approached his brother, he bowed to the ground seven times before him, no longer deceiving, no longer manipulating, no longer trying to take from his brother. He is humbly bowing before his brother. What about Esau? Esau ran to meet him and embraced him. And they both wept. This is one of the most beautiful moments in scripture to me, because you have this brother who is expecting his brother's wrath, and he gets grace and forgiveness. Instead, Jacob says, seeing your face is like seeing the face of God. So now this brother, after 20 years apart, 20 years of a broken relationship, he sees his brother no longer as one to compete with, no longer as one to be jealous of, no longer one to take from 'cause none of that matters anymore. This is just my brother. And then Esau looks around and he goes, who are all these people? And, and, and what are all these cattle? And one by one, Jacob gets to introduce his family to his brother. Now I can imagine in that moment, these brothers are going, look what we missed in each other's lives for 20 years. Why didn't we do this 10 years ago, five years ago? Why did we ever let this happen? Look what we have missed in each other's life through this, through this rivalry. And so as we put ourselves in the story, I wonder, who do you most closely relate to? Or maybe you relate to both brothers like Esau. You can say, yes, I made bad decisions. Yes, I let go of long-term things for short term gratification. Yes, that's that's what I did. But I'm the one who was betrayed. I'm the one who was abandoned. I'm the one who lost maybe a childhood. Things that can't be replaced, A relationship, an opportunity. It was done to me. My heart got broken. How do I move to forgiveness after all of that? Well, we love to talk about that around here. In fact, we have a whole night during our class called genius of one, where we talk about how do we do that? Because listen, healing is possible, but forgiveness is necessary. Now it's possible that unlike these brothers, forgiveness won't mean reconciling. Um, sometimes reconciling is not possible because the person's not willing. Or maybe the person isn't even alive anymore. Or maybe it's not safe, but forgiveness is necessary and it's possible. Or maybe you relate more to Jacob and you say, look, I was the one who did the wrong. I am the one who cheated. I am the one who stole. I am the one who abandoned. I am the one who relapsed. It was me. And you cannot imagine Angela, the shame and the regret that I live with. Well, let me tell you about a young man that my husband and I walked with for a long time. And then there came a time where he made a big mistake, just a one time big mistake. And it was possibly gonna cost him legally, definitely financially, maybe some relationships, maybe even his job. And as he navigated that, knowing the consequences that could come and some consequences came. But he saw God show up in every one of those areas and walk him through it and rescue him, came to his aid, came to his rescue. And the beautiful thing is that when it looked like, uh, there were gonna be some consequences, but he was gonna make it through, he sat with my husband and I tears rolling down his face and he said, but here's what I don't get. I'm guilty. I deserve all of it. I deserve the punishment. I deserve it. And God has come to my rescue anyway. Now, some of us think, you know, we may not relate to either one of these, and we're like, what about justice? I mean, some people need to experience their consequences. Why does God actually come to their aid like that? And let me tell you, whenever I find myself in that place, I have to pause and remember that I have also received a lot of grace. I have been forgiven of much. My daughter came to me, she was about five years old and came to me once to, to tell on her big sister. And she came running up to me and she goes, mom, Melissa hit me back first. I was like, well sweetie, um, I think that means you hit your sister and probably means you hit her a second time back, right? Because she hit you back first. She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you have told her not to hit me back. And so I couldn't quite get her to fess up and understand the consequence of what she did. Often we do that God wants to approach us, wants to confess something, wants to work something through us. And we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, but God, I mean, hello. Look what about that? And we'd love to, to just not look at our own, but listen to this. Romans tells us, for everyone has sinned. We all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God in his grace freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins, freed us from the penalty of our sins. You have fallen short. I have fallen short. When we, we miss the mark over and over, we have this savior who came to us to give freely. Well, let me tell you another story about a young woman I mentored and walked with for, for many years. And one day I could tell she there was something, you know, really bothering her. And she finally said, okay, I need to tell you something that I've never told anyone and I've been putting this off. And I said, okay. And she said, um, years ago when I was in college, I was a believer, had seen God show up for my life. But a series of things happened in my life that just made me angry with God. I just needed him to show up in different ways than he did. And I got angry and I walked away from him. She said, now I didn't. I can't say I stopped believing, but I walked away. And I decided, alright then I'm just gonna live my life like my friends do. I'm gonna do whatever I want to in the moment. I'm just gonna live like that. She said. So I did. And there came a time where I ended up pregnant, unmarried and pregnant. And she said I couldn't go to my family. They'd be so ashamed of me. And, and they, they would be so disappointed. I saw my only option as abortion. I just didn't see any other option. She said. So I go for the procedure, waiting for the procedure to be done. Knowing, knowing this wasn't God's best way. Through this, knowing this was not what I should do. But I got the procedure and I'm in the recovery room. And all I can say is the curtain was pulled back on what had really happened, the sin I had just committed. And I was overwhelmed with regret and with shame, she said, so all I knew to do was to cry out to God, the God I had walked away from years ago. And in that room all by myself, I cried out to him. And Angela, the only way I can explain what happened next is God came close to me, wrapped me in his arms, and together we grieved my sin. Now, that is the moment that she would say I reconciled with God. Healing took time. Healing is still taking time. She will tell you that regret and shame and the reality of her laws come knocking at her door regularly. And she keeps turning to God. She keeps receiving grace. So if you have gotten an image of God for whatever reason, in whatever way, that if you turn to him and if you're honest about your past, whatever it is, whatever thing that is, you might think that he is coming towards you with 400 men to wipe you out. If that's the image you have of him, you have deceived. And I am so sorry that that's what you've maybe been told or shown. The truth is, you have a loving God who waits for you with grace and with forgiveness and with love, and says, trust me with this. Let's wrestle through this. Let's be honest about this. Listen, our pastors and leaders at this church are so passionate about people finding their healing. And we've prayed about how to move forward with this. And what we're gonna do is in the fall, I with the counselor, Chrissy Sturgis, licensed counselor, are gonna gather women who have made that choice, who have had an abortion, who would like to walk towards freedom and forgiveness. We're gonna gather and we're gonna work through that. We're gonna wrestle through that. It's gonna be private, it's gonna be just us. And if that is you or someone you know, please email me. It's very confidential. In fact, you can email pastors at the Crossing Church and all you have to say is, please put me in touch with Angela and they will do that. But let me speak to you about what to do in the meantime. And if that one's not yours, whatever it is, how do I start moving towards God? How do I start letting him see? Well, it starts by reading Romans eight. And if you have to read it every day, you pull out your Bible or your phone and you read it every day. And it says this, there is now no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. Did you hear that? There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Those who belong to him. And because you belong to him, the power of the living, life-giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. Lean into that power. Listen, this is what's so beautiful about baptism. It's symbolic, yes, but it's very powerful and very symbolic because what happens in the moment, what it's symbolizing is who I was is not who I'm becoming. What has defined me before will define me no longer Why? Because God has given me a new name and a new identity. He is mine and I am his. Don't run away from that grace. Don't run away from a God who wants Good for you, who wants to rename you. Now, I want you to listen to the words of this song as Audra sings it over us. And I want you to let the words sink in and understand that there is a God of grace who is turning towards you.