You're listening to audio from Faith Church, located on the north side of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now here's the teaching. Good morning. I am Jeff, one of the lead pastors here at Faith Church.

Welcome to, the last Sunday of 2024. As we come to this time of year, one of the things that I think back to is spending holidays around this time with my grandparents. And, 2 things that, I always remember from my grandmother. 1, we had to eat black eyed peas for good luck in the new year. Anyone else have that?

A few hands. It's kind of a, I think, a more southern tradition. I don't know why we had to eat vegetables we didn't like for good luck, but apparently that was a thing. And second, grandma and grandpa wanted to know what resolutions we were going to make for the new year, what commitments we wanted to make to to try and be better or do better. I don't know that resolutions are as, common anymore.

Have any of you made any resolutions or thinking about New Year's resolutions? How many of you are making the same resolution this year that you did last year? Yeah, a few a few honest people. Thank you. For those of you who haven't gotten to it, I ran across a list of handy resolutions for the new year that you can adopt.

1, stop exercising. Number 2, procrastinate more starting tomorrow. Stop reliving the past and worry about the future instead. Or 4, never make New Year's resolutions again. Yes.

Well, we laugh at those not as much as I'd hoped, but those kinds of easy, self serving ways, right? It would be great if, God was asking us to do things like that. You know, we asked each other, honey, you know, I want you to do less work around the house this year. To score, you know that it's actually really hard. It's a lot more difficult than that.

And the problem with resolutions with that kind of commitment to do better, to be better, is that it's often just sort of a top down external motivation that sounds like, you know, I really should, or I ought to, or I have to. They're really focused on behavior and not so much what's going on in the inside. And we wanna be people who are not just behaving differently, but people who are actually different and better on the inside. The kind of people who don't just make resolutions, but who actually live with a hope and a power and an ability to be different and to live differently. That's the kind of change that I think on our best days, in our best selves, that we're really interested in, which tells us that what we need is really an internal change that results in changed behavior, not a change that's focused on the behavior itself directly.

But the good news is you don't have to stay the same. You not in the ways that matter most, because Jesus came to change us from the inside out, to change us into new people and and to change our intrinsic motivators, our desires that result in change behavior. And today, we're gonna look at a fascinating story in the Bible in Genesis 32. If you haven't turned there already, you can turn to page 32 providentially enough in those black Bibles in front of you. I arranged it that way just for you guys.

Genesis 32 on page 2. Nobody laughed first hour at that either. We are looking at a life changing experience in a man named Jacob, who was the patriarch of the 12 tribes of Israel through his 12 children. In Genesis 32, starting in verse 22, there's a pivotal moment in Jacob's life that I think illustrates how God changes us, not just how God changed Jacob. How real change comes from the inside.

And we want to look at steps to lasting change. The first step, the first phase in real change is one that we're all familiar with. It's crisis. Crisis. And it doesn't necessarily mean life is falling apart.

Crisis is when reality demands something of me that I don't want to give. It might be seeing how you're not living up to the person that you say you want to be. You're not living out the things that you say you believe in. And our biggest battle in life is not so much physical. It's not emotional.

It's not even relational. Our biggest battle is a spiritual one. It's a battle that we all face with God, and it centers around the issue of control. Because the biggest battle we face is wrestling through who do I trust most, me or God? And when things are going great, when life is working out according to our plans, it's easy to say, Oh, God is in control, and I love him, and I trust him so much, and I'm so thankful that he's in charge.

Crisis occurs when God allows life to ruin our plans and demands something of us that we don't want or gives us something we don't want. Well, look at what that looks like in Jacob's life starting in verse 22. The same night he arose and took his 2 wives, his 2 female servants, and his 11 children, and he crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone.

Now just a little context. If you're familiar at all with the Bible, sir, you may be familiar with Abraham, God appeared to him and called him and said, I will be your God, you will be my people. I will bless you and give you an inheritance of offspring, and your family will be a blessing to the nations. Abraham and Sarah in their old age have one child, Isaac, who is the father of Jacob and his twin brother, Esau. Now 20 years earlier, Jacob had tricked his twin brother, Esau, into selling him his birthright in in a moment of weakness.

He took advantage of him. And then not long after, Jacob tricks Isaac and and gets the blessing that was supposed to go to Esau and takes it for himself. In 2 master strokes of manipulation, Jacob has stolen, in a sense, the material and the spiritual blessing from his brother, Esau. And because of this, Esau is understandably outraged. I mean, anyone who's, had an angry older brother or sister can relate.

Anyone who has had an annoying, scheming younger brother or sister can also relate. So Jacob flees for his life to his uncle Laban, whom he's been working for for the last 20 years. Now, God had, promised Jacob, I will take care of you. Does anyone else have trouble promising trusting God's promises when things are scary and dangerous? Jacob ran off to his uncle Laban, has worked for him, married 2 of his daughters, and through them and the 2 maidservants has had 11 children, and the the family dynamics alone are a constant crisis.

But the immediate crisis now is that Jacob has kind of worn out his welcome with Laban. He's heading back home right towards Esau. So he's got a a angry uncle behind him and a murderous brother in front of him, and he's wondering, can I really trust God in this? Because an angry, murderous brother seems a lot more real and powerful than some spiritual promise of God that he's gonna take care of me. So Jacob sends, some of his servants ahead to try and flatter Esau, he he sends ahead some gifts to try and maybe bribe him and and cool his anger off, and then he sends his own family out in front of him, knowing that they may become human shields to protect him.

Jacob's intrinsic motivations as a man with 11 children, a grown man are still pretty messed up. Number 1, protect Jacob at all costs. Number 2, use people and things to accomplish goal number 1. This time, it doesn't seem to be working. And sometimes God loves us so much that he will bring a crisis that we can't fix.

The crisis feels overwhelming. It's painful. It's uncomfortable. And when we're in a crisis, the natural thing to do is is look for the quickest, most painless way out of it. But instead of reacting, a crisis becomes an opportunity for reflection and and reassessment.

Maybe if you're feeling that sense of crisis right now, it's an opportunity to ask, what got me here? How did I end up in this place? And what what might God be saying to me in this crisis that I'm experiencing? Look in verse 24. So Jacob sends his family across with all his belongings, and he's left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of day.

And confrontation. Confrontation is when reality exposes those inner motivators, the the desires or default coping mechanisms. Jacob's been running his whole life. Right? He's been scheming and manipulating, but now he's literally left with nowhere to run.

And then this stranger shows up, a stranger whom we find out later is actually God himself. God takes on human form to confront Jacob. Anyone here ever done any wrestling? A little, organized or not, yes. What's the goal of a wrestling match?

You're gonna pin your opponent, right? You're pinning them. You're you're the goal is to get your opponent to say, I give up. I can't fight anymore. Right?

To say, I surrender. Jacob has never surrendered in his entire life. He he's a scrapper. He's a fighter. He's a wrestler.

He's never given into anyone, not even God. Why would I give you control of my life, God, when it seems like everything is working fine? I've got it all figured out, right? So Jacob wrestles with God. Now, what do you think is going to happen when someone wrestles with God?

Who's going to win? You would think so. Look in verse 25. Then the, when the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, just just stop right there. Okay?

God is wrestling with Jacob, and he can't overpower Jacob? Of course, he can. So, obviously, I think we're meant to understand God did not want to overpower Jacob. God refuses to overpower him because unless Jacob gives up willingly, it's not really a surrender, it's a conquest. And God is not interested in conquering Jacob or you or me.

I mean, God could command our obedience. He could force us to obey him, right? He's God. But he doesn't want robots. He wants a relationship with us.

We we want our kids to say, I love you. And maybe we could force them to say that by threatening them or or bribing them, but that's not what we want. We want them to say I love you because they actually love us. And we were created by God to love and worship and walk with him because he is life and love, and that's what he wants to give us. What are the things you're wrestling with?

Maybe it's hurts that are hard to forgive. Maybe it's destructive desires that you keep giving into. Maybe you just look at your life and you kinda have a sense it's just sort of aimless. There's no real meaning or or significance to it. You know there are things that that God wants you to surrender to him, but but you struggle.

You're you're wrestling. Wherever you're wrestling with God, that's a good clue to your intrinsic motivators, your deepest desires. It's an opportunity to ask, what do I really want? I mean, God could say to Jacob, you know, Jacob, I I'm God. Will will you just get over it?

Will will you stop it? Will you grow up already? But amazingly, he he allows us to wrestle with him. He he surfaces our desires in order to point us towards a real meaning and and a real purpose and significance to our lives. But he doesn't let the wrestling go on forever.

Look in verse 25. When he saw that he didn't prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. This is the way he has to get through to Jacob. But because, otherwise, Jacob would probably keep on wrestling with him throughout the whole next day if he does. But God's point is not to just wrestle with Jacob indefinitely, but to bring him to the end of himself.

And God will do that in our lives. He'll he'll let us wrestle with him, but, ultimately, he's going to bring us to a point where we have to acknowledge there's a weakness and a brokenness. He he because he loves us too much to leave us stuck in a place where we're relying on default coping mechanisms. It's been 20 years that Jacob has been running and scheming and manipulating and deceiving and and working things his way. And now it's as if God says, okay, Jacob.

Finally, enough is enough. I'm not leaving until I get this settled with you. Maybe some of you are in that place right now. You're you're in a crisis wondering, how did I get here? What happened?

How am I in this mess? Some of us are are maybe leading polite, respectable, upright, decent, productive lives, but it's also clear that you're in command and you're calling the shots, and God is nowhere in that equation at all. Many of our crises are a long time in the making just like Jacob's. And and over months years, God keeps quietly, gently saying, I'm here. I I want your best.

Follow me. Trust me. But we ignore God's prompting, and and when we do, what starts out as a small thing over years can end up growing to ruin careers, ruin finances, ruin families, ruin relationships, ruin witness. It's usually only when things become a crisis that we're willing to change, when we have no other option left like Jacob. Somebody once said, we don't change when we see the light, we change when we feel the heat.

Jacob's feeling the heat, maybe you are. Maybe you're struggling with God over something that you want to do that he doesn't seem to be giving you or something that you don't want to do that he's prompting you to do. Maybe it's just a nagging discomfort. Is there something more than this? Verse 26.

The man said, let me go, for the day has broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. You gotta love Jacob, right? I mean, he's got one hip out of joint. He's crippled and he's still making demands.

I'm still gonna wrestle with you. I'm not letting you go. What are you gonna do? Bleed on me. It's kinda like a scene from Monty Python.

But but listen, this is a different kind of tenacity than than Jacob's wrestling before. Jacob has stopped wrestling. Now he's clinging. That's the next phase in real changes is clinging because at the center of his being, what does Jacob want? I will not let you go unless you bless me.

That's all he's really ever wanted to know beneath all of the scheming and and the working the angles to to know God's presence, to know God's goodness, to know God's promise. God doesn't fault us for that. But Jacob's problem and our problem often is, 1, the way we define blessing, money, success, control. Jacob wants it all and he wants it always. That's his extrinsic motivation.

And the second problem is the way that he's derived blessing by working the angles, by cheating, by cutting corners, by manipulating people and circumstances to get what he wants no matter the cost. Jacob's problem, I think, is similar to a problem we all wrestle with is we'd really like to try and force God's hand to to get him to give us what we think we need according to what seems good to us. We just like to help god along with his job. Right? Because that's what he's supposed to be doing is giving us the good stuff.

Does it sound familiar to anyone? You know, god god, if I, man, if I tell the truth, it's gonna feel like losing. If I give generously to to support your mission and things that you care about, I'm not gonna have enough. If I work the way that you want me to, I'll I'll never get ahead. I'll never get promoted.

If I forgive those people, they'll just get away with it. If I trust you in this part of my life, I know you're gonna do something I don't want you to do. So I'm I'm just gonna keep you at arm's length. And that's Jacob, and and that can be us. But when you're powerless, when you're at the end of yourself, stop clinging to the thing that you're trying to get and and cling to God instead.

That's what Jacob is doing here. Now he realizes, I think, who he's really wrestling with. That's why he's asking for the blessing. Cling to God. Hold on to him because now you're in a good place where God can bring about lasting change.

Sort of talking about it. I thought about this in relation to our our old house in Saint Louis. In the basement, there was this big bulging, ugly patch of concrete in one end of the basement. And, it basically just sat there and didn't bother us because it was behind some shelving. Fine.

Perfect solution. But then we were getting ready to sell our house, and I realized, like, oh, man. Somebody's gonna come look through the house. They're gonna see this bulging patch of concrete and wanna know what's going on. Is there some foundation problem?

And we gotta call in repair people and get estimates. And, so, I moved the shelves. I dug out the old, ugly patch of concrete. And, if you know anything about the way homes are constructed, usually across the width of our house, the span is too long for wood joist to carry themselves. So there's a support beam under them, the the big metal eye beam that runs across our basement that I hit my head on all the time.

Right? So there's a pocket in the foundation wall that that beam sits on to support the house. Well, they had poured the concrete a little too shallow for that beam, and there was not enough depth. It was too deep, actually, for where the beam was supposed to sit. So there was, like, a 2 inch gap between the end of the beam and the bottom of the foundation wall.

So the builders had just, you know, solved the problem by shoving in pieces of broken ceramic tile under the I beam that was supporting the entire west end of our home. It was being held up by scraps of leftover construction material. That house was clinging to something that was not designed to carry its weight. It could not be a solid foundation. And sometimes we we patch up our lives with a narrative about ourselves or a solution to our problem that that kind of works.

We cling to it, and we get stuck. Maybe there's something in your life that you're clinging to that that's become a foundation of your identity, your meaning, your purpose that is never really meant to be the foundation of your life. God asked Jacob to take, an honest look at his life. Name? And he said, Jacob.

Now, names are important in the Bible And sometimes we get the little notes that translate the name for us and tell us what they mean. But because they're descriptions of the people, Jacob is named for the first act he ever performed in his life. Coming out from their mother's womb, Jacob's hand reached out and grabbed Esau's heel. Jacob literally means heel grabber. He's he's a wrestler.

He's a deceiver. He's someone who will trip you up to get ahead. So Jacob comes clean, he says, I'm cheater, I'm heel grabber, I'm manipulator. That's the 4th step in real change is confession, Confession. Now, for some of us, that may bring up, experiences in the past, maybe in a church, we grew up in where confession was just some rote thing that we went through to, you know, get the thing that we wanted on the other side of it.

Nobody really likes confession, but change comes through honest acknowledgement of what we're doing, not just going through the motions, but owning up to our desires and our motivations that produced what we're confessing. If we had to name our characters like they did in the Bible, what would our names be? Angry, impatient, lustful, greedy, unforgiving, bitter, jealous, self centered, thankless? What do you need to be honest about? I mean, if we believe there's a God at all who knows us, he obviously knows it already.

So we might as well come clean. He he already knows it. Maybe there's something you need to confess, you need to admit to God or to others. A couple had been married just a few months. The husband was a little embarrassed about this foot odor problem that he had, and he decided that his solution, I'm just gonna wear socks to bed, and and then, you know, my wife won't find out, and it won't be embarrassing for me.

The wife, for her part, knew that she had really bad morning breath. And so her solution was she would just always go run to the bathroom and brush her teeth first thing in the morning before greeting her husband. Problem solved. Until one night, the husband wakes up before the alarm goes off, and he realizes one of his socks is missing, and he frantically throws the cover off, and he start rooting around in the bed because he's gotta find the sock before his wife finds out his secret. And his wife is stirred by the commotion, and she turns to him and says, honey, are you okay?

And he says, yes, but I think you ate one of my socks. Reality has a way of catching up with us. That's what brings a crisis. Right? Reality crashes in on our plans and our solutions.

We might as well be upfront with God because he's not there to condemn us, just as we heard earlier. God sent his son in the world to save us, not to condemn us. So we may as well be upfront with God and and people who love us and who can help us. It's been said that a person with no secrets has nothing to fear. That's the blessing of confession.

Even more, until we're honest about ourselves and what we're really wrestling with, god's kindness, his forgiveness won't seem very amazing or interesting or useful to us. Jesus said it himself. Right? It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call righteous people, but sinners.

The gospel, the good news of Jesus is that you are far worse than you ever dared acknowledge and you are far more loved than you ever dared hope. That's the message of Jesus. If you are in Jesus, if you were belong to Jesus by faith, that means something incredibly important. God loves you as much as he ever can or ever will, and nothing that you do will ever change that. So there's nothing to fear in being honest with God.

Confession brings freedom actually and reminds us of God's loving kindness. Jesus is saying, if you were tired of performing, tired of trying to live up to the standard, tired of pretending, come to me and find rest for your soul. Crisis is an opportunity to reaffirm God's control of my life and confession as part of turning my life back over to him. And when we do that, that brings the next phase of change, conversion. Conversion.

That means, turning away from old desires, old coping strategies, old stories we've written for ourselves, and instead inviting God to give us a new name, and a new identity, and new motivations. And whether you can point to a specific moment of conversion in your life or not, for everyone who follows Jesus, there's a lifelong process of being transformed, of being changed more and more into the best person of ourselves that Jesus created you to be. That's what Jesus' work is about. We spend the rest of our lives clinging to him and learning to trust him in the process of growing us to live out our identity as children of God. Because that's what Jacob is learning here about himself.

Look in verse 28. Then the man said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have overcome or prevailed. Jacob means deceiver. Israel can either mean he strives or God strives or prince with God. Now, which of those would you rather have as your name, right?

I mean, I want to know that I'm a prince or a princess with God, right? It's great to preach, you know, Jacob went from deceiver to prince, it went from deceiver to overcomer, and and so can you. But both of those meanings of Jacob's name are true. And and I think it's more encouraging because it's real. I mean, if you go on reading in Genesis 32 and on, you can see that Jacob is going from wrestling with God and praying to limping and walking with a limp with God for the rest of his life.

If you're a Christian, you're a child of the king, you you were a prince or a princess. You have a new nature, a new identity. God gives us his word and puts his spirit in us to help us change, and yet change comes slowly, sometimes imperceptibly over years. We are the striving, stumbling children of God who limp our way towards what God intends us to be. God is just as committed to changing us as he was to changing Jacob.

The good news is you don't have to stay the same. And because god loves you, he's not gonna leave you where you are. But he promises that he will complete the work that he's begun in you to make you look more and more like the person he created you to be. Are you working with him? Are you inviting him to help you grow and change in those ways?

Last phase in verse 29, Jacob asked him, 'Please tell me your name.' But he said, why is it that you ask my name?' And then he blessed him there. I guess it's really interesting. Tell me your name. Jacob wants to know just a little bit more about his opponent. A little more knowledge would be nice.

Give me give me a little more information. But God sees beneath this question, Jacob is looking for more clarity, more information because that's the final step really in in transformation is getting clarity. But clarity doesn't come from knowing more information. In God's response, I I think there's kind of a gentle rebuke. Jacob, you you don't need more information.

You don't need more knowledge about the intricate details of how the trinity works or the end times or what's gonna happen to you next week even. You just need to trust me and act on what you already know. A quick show of hands. Who who among here would say you've been a Christian for 10 years or more? Okay.

That's that's a lot of us in here. How many sermons have you heard? Hundreds of sermons. How many books have you read? How many Bible studies have we been in?

How many conferences have we attended? And and all good stuff, and yet, honestly, don't we struggle just to live out the stuff that we already know? It's not like we need more information, more details, more knowledge, because clarity doesn't come from more knowledge. It comes well, look in verse 30. Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared.

Clarity comes from knowing who God is and knowing who he is for you. He's not an enemy to overcome. He's not a tool to use in our plans. He's not, someone to be manipulated, he's not a judge who's come to condemn us, he is a holy God who's also a friend and a helper. And now Jacob knows that God sees him face to face and knows him, knows him inside and out and knows what he needs and knows what he's longing for and knows that God loves him and that God is going with him and that he can be trusted.

Clarity comes from knowing the God who loves us and pursues us, knowing his grace and his confidence, his his kindness to us, and that's what gives us clarity to go forward without knowing what's gonna happen today or tomorrow or next week. Verse 31, the sun rose on him as he passed Peniel limping because of his hip. A new day is dawning in the life of the man formerly known as Jacob. As Israel, see, he's he's physically weaker, but he's spiritually stronger. And and if you look back, you know, if if God had appeared to Jacob at the beginning of this story and said, Jacob, what do you want me to do for you?

What do you want? Jacob would have said, make me stronger. Give me more power. And instead, God makes him weaker and more dependent. What Israel really wants is God's blessing, to know God's presence, to live in the promise that God is with him.

He wants life with God, and now he has it. Can you relate to Jacob's story? Maybe there's a crisis in your life, maybe just a nagging sense of something is not right or it's not the way it should be. Maybe there's something you need to confess. It's surfacing some coping strategy, some disordered desire in you.

Are you willing to take an honest look and and let God let God bring blessing as he confronts you and and as he brings conversion in your life? Maybe you wonder if it's too late to change. You've gone too far. You've been this way too long. It is never too late.

You don't have to stay the same. As long as we are alive, there is hope, and god is growing and changing us as long as we are here. God wants to help you. God wants to change you from the inside out into the person that he made you to be and that in your best self, you really want to be. As the calendar turns from 24 to 25, some of us, not as many as I thought maybe, are at least not making resolutions, but thinking hopefully about what we want to be in this new year.

The kinds of change that we would like to see God bring in our lives and hoping to stick maybe to resolutions. And we hear it all around, you know, new year, new you, and usually it's tied to, you know, an ad for a gym membership or a sleep comfort bed, or something that will improve your life in some way. Growth is important. Commitment's essential. But the tools that we need, the resources that we need are are not things that we're gonna buy, things that people are gonna sell us.

And few of us are going to make any dramatic life change because of a new year's resolution. And probably, none of us are going to meet God face to face in the next 2 days. Transformation is actually pretty mundane. It's really ordinary. And and actually, that's good news for us.

Because change happens in a 1,000 little moments where we live most of the time. Right? The the the good news of Jesus Christ is that he offers help, he offers grace, he offers new power for each of those little moments. The Bible doesn't say his mercies are new on January 1st each year. His mercies are new every morning.

Every morning, you start again with a new opportunity to meet with God and walk with him in the little details of your lives. And Jesus, whom we've just celebrated the birth of is called Emmanuel, God with us, not just because he came to be born in a stable, but because he's come to live in us to be God with us in January February, March, June August, and every day of our lives. That means he's present and active in all the little interactions and where we're rubbing up the wrong way against each other and bumping elbows and annoying and irritating each other. And in those moments, God is holding out the offer and the promise to be with you and to change you, to encourage you, and to shape you to to be more like him. All those little moments are designed to help take you beyond your strength so that you would rely on him and seek the help and hope that only he offers.

We need to be committed to change in 25 but not hope in a big resolution or event of transformation but but instead in day to day ordinary moment by moment process of crisis and confrontation and confession and conversion that brings clarity and confidence. You don't have to stay the same. God wants to change you. Will you invite him to do that with you? I think we should pray.

Father in heaven, thank you so much that, you love us, You know us, and you love us, and you love us enough not to leave us where we are. I, probably many of us, over times with family, even in the last week, we can look over moments where I got needlessly irritated, where I was short-tempered, where we were trying to force our will and make plans work out the way we wanted. God, help us to help us to see. Help us to pay attention. Help us to be willing to let you show us the places where our motivations, our desires are wonky because we are trying to be in control.

Oh god, help us to live out of faith in your promise that you love us and you've come to help us and to change us in all the best ways to look more like you, to show more of your love and kindness and goodness. Oh, do your good work in us, Jesus, we pray. Amen.