The uh-oh hello

Good morning. We're going to move into this passage shortly here. We've got a few topics to address first, some miscellaneous but important pieces of information. One is there will be ministry at Highline today. And so that'll be at what time? 2.30. OK. So just one thing to make note of. Another thing, let's see, Wayne, are you out there? Okay.

I've asked Wayne to come up and we're going to kind of interview him here about some recent changes, things going on in our church body. And so anyway, Wayne, I'm catching on to some, do I call them rumors? Anyway, things that have been happening among the deacons, and I just wanted you to kind of catch us up to what's going on here.

Well, you know, for a long time, many years, this church operated with a board of directors, and we had tried for a long time to get rid of that image And so over the years, we didn't call it a board of directors anymore. We called it a board of elders and deacons. And then later on, we had split up the deacons from the elders, operating as different functions. within the church. And the deacons met once a month.

And we have their meeting. And just recently, it was brought up, why are we doing what we do? And does that fit into the body? This grand order of deacons with its grand poobah Uh-huh. Wait, wait, wait. Who's the Poohbah? Well, we had some elections, and it was called railroading of officers. I see, okay, all right. So we had the assistant Grand Poohbah. So that was the Pooh, this is the Bah. Yes, yes. And the secretary to the Poohbah, who when was missing, we had to have somebody else take minutes of the meeting, of which we sent out to all the deacons and they put them in a drawer and that's where they stayed.

So the question was, are we operating as an organization or an organism? Are we functioning as a servants or are we functioning again as this grand order? Are we functioning as lifting up the body or coming alongside in love to the body? And so we're revisiting that issue and just seeing where we do stand.

There's a number of people that function in this body as deacons and deaconesses who are not labeled as such. Scripture doesn't give us a whole lot of information about deacons. It does talk about their qualifications and what they should be like to serve the body. In fact, we don't know a lot of the names. We do know some of them were martyred So that's another issue that we sort of wanted to get away from.

All right. Yeah. You gave that careful consideration, I'm sure. And I'm thinking as we operate as an organism, we function in love. I was just thinking about this morning, trying to get everybody to sit down. They're all back there visiting. That's part of this organization or this organism. We function as together as believers. One thing I wanted to mention in the bulletin, there's a prayer request and praise.

Please continue to pray for Bertha Anderson. And do we do that? Yeah. But do you know that Bertha is praying for you, unless she's laying there in that place. So just a reminder from her, she visualizes you sitting in the pews that you sit in each Sunday. So please remain in those exact same... Because if you move, she won't pray for you.

OK. But anyway, that's that's something that we're revisiting and just looking at why we do the things that we do. OK. All right. Well, I appreciate it. So it's the organism. All right. This is the life of the body. That's what it is. Praise the Lord. Thank you. OK. We have Another topic to touch on that's unrelated to this in some respects, but a different one.

Some of you may have caught up with about a week or two, an email that went out that says Vern's going to Uganda. And you may be wondering what that's all about. Sometimes I do. But what's happening is January 21st, through February 3rd, which may seem like next year, and it is, but it's only a couple of months and a little bit more away.

Bruce Beatty, can I have you stand up here just so that folks know who you are? Yeah, this is the guy I'm going with, okay? And one reason I'm going with him, he's been there before, I haven't, okay? So at any rate, he now will be going and lots of things to do. do and develop there and work on. We're actually kind of working daily in preparation and in communication with the people there.

We're going to be spending time centered around this larger town of Mbale. but going out into outlying areas. Some of the things that Bruce tells me is the women in the outlying areas are typically charged with carrying the water up to 80 pounds on their head. Carrying it up to three miles and pretty rustic well facilities oftentimes. The other thing he tells me is if you take a picture of the kids and then show it to them, they don't, necessarily believe you that that's their picture because they've never seen themselves before.

So it's really quite a time. But one of the things, and this is something that we've kind of sent out an initial invitation for you to be involved in. One of the things we'll be doing is we would like to take MP3 players or small CD players because we have in audio file format the entire New Testament in their language, which is Lugandan. It's a really nice quality recording. In fact, I'm going to experiment here. Let's see. Uh-oh. I'm in trouble now. Yep, I better leave it. Okay.

The entire Lugandan New Testament is in audio files, very high quality, very well done. But most of these people, they do not have an MP3 player or a CD player. It's just that's not something they even own. A goodly number of the people in the outlying areas, they don't have electricity.

So this will be something that will be new to them. So from our contact over there, nobody else has brought in the Lugandan New Testament like this or in this way. So this will be something new. For those who either cannot read, this is helpful. Or because a great many people spend a lot of time walking, they can listen to the Lugandan New Testament. They can listen to the whole New Testament. As they're doing the various things that they're doing, traveling back and forth, even the ladies carrying the water can listen to the New Testament during that time. It's a tremendous, fresh opportunity. Never been done before in this area among the believers there.

So, at any rate, The toys and books ministry, when that gets over, we'll put a box out. You'll have a couple of months time window. We're not looking for something fancy or expensive. This might best even be, you know, an older MP3 player, something used but still operable. You know, the one you're retiring because you're getting a new one for Christmas or something. And there's a couple months window and we like to just load those up as much as we can with the Lugandan New Testament. And these people will, as far as we have any information, be able to hear for the first time in these audio files the New Testament in their own language.

Something that Bruce shared with me this morning I'd like us to pause and pray about. There is a fellow by the name of Khalid. He was a Muslim. until June. He has been a believer only a matter of months. And for trying to help Bruce out and carry out some things that Bruce was doing, and he's talking about just going up and measuring a church building, he's gotten in some kind of just completely unfounded legal trouble. I'd like us to pause and pray for not only this ministry, but specifically for Khalid, this young believer in the Lord who really longs to see the gospel and the word of God shared among these people and for the needless trouble that he's in. Let's pray.

Lord, we do bring before you Khalid and We know that the trial that he is currently in, the difficulty, is something that you will intend to use. And at the same time, we do pray for mercy and restraint for him since he's gotten in trouble for nothing at all. And we look for you to work across a distance that we can't reach and we can't touch. But we know you can and we thank you for that. We thank you for the ministry that you have laid in front of us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. OK.

Let's move on into this Genesis 33 passage here this morning. This is a continuation we mentioned last week. that Genesis 32 and 33 are kind of two halves of the same story. Here is Jacob who has been on his way back to the promised land after 20 years absence, but he's coming back to a situation where his brother, and remember he hasn't seen him for 20 years, his brother when he left the promised land 20 years before had declared, I'm going to kill you. And so as he comes back to the promised land, and the Lord told him that you should go back to the promised land.

As he comes back, he's anticipating this, uh-oh, hello. This encounter with his brother, where his brother means the very worst for him. And he doesn't understand it. This is, so far as Jacob sees it, so far as he understands it, this is his worst nightmare come true.

So here is Jacob. He's been off to this place where, as he was gone and away, the problem seemed so distant. Now it's right there. Here is Esau coming and the servants of Jacob have come back in what appears to be a panic because Esau is coming with 400 men. And Jacob is thinking, I am toast. I'm a goner. He is really afraid of this.

It was also hard to reconcile the idea that, wait a minute, this Esau guy wants to kill me. And Lord, you promised you'd take care of me. You promised, Lord, that you would bring me descendants. How does this work out? I'm very afraid and I don't understand.

So now we have, after all the preparations that Jacob has made to try to hold off his brother's attack and to try to placate him at various points, and I imagine slow him down with hundreds of sheep and goats and camels and things of that sort, a last-minute scramble. And my apologies, Eli, I know you don't like eggs. Okay.

Now, Jacob put the maids, remember he had two maids, the maids of Leah and Rachel. He put the maids and their children in front and then here's Leah coming next with her children and Rachel and Joseph. Now I want you to notice a couple of things in that order. It seems like the ones that he cared the least about, the maids, were up front. And then of the two wives, Leah and Rachel, he put Leah first. Rachel was at the tail end. It's like, okay, she'll have some chance of getting away if my brother's attacking.

Notice that of the sons, and there are 11 of them now, one is mentioned by name, Joseph. This is an early indication that Jacob has not totally learned his lesson about favoritism. We'll see more about that in later chapters. After getting them all arranged, you can imagine Joseph paying all the attention.

This has got to be just right because this is his last shot to try to stop his brother. In getting them all in the right sequence, as we find out, for nothing, Jacob went ahead of them all. Here he is ahead of this group. He went in front of all these very well sequenced family members.

So after hours of directing and arranging and spacing out all the flocks, selecting the gifts of livestock and giving orders to his men, Esau is coming. Esau is coming. What does he do? As Esau gets closer, Jacob bows, not once, seven times. Seven. Wait a minute. There. Okay. Seven times.

Jacob is bowing to his brother Esau. As Jacob is approaching his brother Esau, and he actually approaches his brother, it seems like Esau has at least slowed down or the approach of Esau hasn't taken over the scene. He bows down the seven times before his brother. Now, bowing to the ground in those days was something you would do to show honor to the one to whom you bow.

And we'll see additional examples of that as we go through the book of Genesis. Bowing seven times, which in scripture is a number of completeness. I could give several examples, but one fairly simple one we've used some months ago was how many days did the Lord take to create? He created the earth in six days, and on the seventh day, the complete week, He rested. One simple example that gets returned to throughout scripture. His honoring of Esau is also a humbling of himself, bowing down in order to honor his brother. A complete honoring, as much as bowing can do, of his brother Esau.

Now, here is Jacob. He is hoping that it's not curtains for him. He's hoping that the 400 men that are with him are just sort of like 400 guests. And you can imagine Esau, because we know how the story ends up, you can imagine Esau, he's not coming with 400 men to attack. He's coming along with 400 men saying, hey, you've got to meet my brother, or something like that.

But Jacob doesn't know this yet. Jacob had spent two nights a day and probably a good portion of another day, at least a part of it, orchestrating this long parade of livestock gifts, ambassadors. And now here's a well-sequenced arrangement of Jacob's family with Jacob at the front end.

So how has Esau been responding to this incredible train of animals and people? Is Esau furious? Is he livid? Is he outraged, frustrated to no end, profoundly irritated by it all? What is this endless sequence of animals and people? What happens is Jacob and Esau embrace and weep together. That's how this feared encounter ends up. They embrace and weep together.

For all the fear, and boy Jacob was really afraid. The Bible has for Jacob one of the strongest expressions of fear as he expresses his fear to the Lord. He is profoundly afraid of his brother's approach and yet what it comes down to is embracing and weeping with one another. I somehow suspect that part of Jacob's weeping has to do with great relief. Oh, I thought I was going to die. I thought you were coming here with 400 men to slaughter us all. Jacob's relief, no doubt, is just overwhelming in the midst of this.

Esau, then, after this period of embracing and weeping, says to Jacob, here are these well-arranged family members behind Jacob. Who are these with you? So there's Jacob who humbly responds, the children whom God has graciously given your servant. These are God's gift. Isn't that interesting? He recognizes that this isn't my doing, this is God's doing. The wives, the maids, and the children all bow in turns.

All coming in sequence and bowing one after the next. It's interesting, after all this, Jacob's intent is, perhaps I can placate my brother with these animals and ambassadors. Spacing them out to give him some time to cool off. Perhaps I can impact my brother emotionally by having my family there behind me.

He's thinking all this. You know what Esau's thinking? He's thinking, huh? That's what he's thinking. He doesn't understand it. What is all this stuff? He's baffled. He's puzzled. At the end of this long parade, Esau doesn't understand what the gift of 580 animals and all the ambassadors mean. What's all this about? I don't get it. Jacob explains that these 580 animals and everything that went along with it is a gift in hope of Esau's favorable reception of Jacob.

Well, Esau is still puzzled, and he actually initially says, no, I don't need it. Thanks, but no thanks. Upon Jacob's urging, however, Esau says, well, okay, if you really feel like you've got to do so, I'll take them, but I still don't understand. Esau finally accepts them.

Jacob and Esau, after this emotional encounter, in which I'm sure Jacob was having this overwhelming sense of relief for days, they finally part ways, head off different directions. From there where they met, Esau went back to Seir, and we'll see it on a map in a minute where that is.

Jacob went along not too far away from where they had their encounter at this place called Sukkoth, Booths, as it is. He built a house in Booths for his livestock. I have no idea why he built it other than he may have just been kind of overwhelmed by what just happened with his brother and said, hey, I'm going to just rest here a while. But nonetheless, it says that he did that. Here is this place called Sukkoth.

Just so we have a frame of reference, there's the Sea of Galilee, the north end there, and the Dead Sea, and the river between being the River Jordan. Seir that we mentioned is over in the very lower right-hand corner. So now it says from there he went along to the city of Shechem where he bought property. Now we first heard of Shechem in Genesis chapter 12 when Abraham was there. And it's a place that actually continues on in scripture. The name gets changed but continues on in scripture even on to the New Testament. So here is Shechem. off to the west of the area at Succoth on the Jordan River, where he was before.

Now, you've likely heard of some other things that happened at Shechem. And one of those would be, this is the place where Christ met the woman at the well. And so it's a place that continued to have importance as a matter of fact, the well where Christ talked to the woman was called Jacob's Well. It says there he built an altar at Shechem and called it El Elohe Israel, which means God the God of Israel.

And you might be thinking, okay, why did he do that? Since God had named him Israel, this is, to put it briefly, a statement like, He is my God. He's making his relationship with the Lord very personal. God the God of Israel. He was Israel. The Lord had named him Israel. God, the God of me.

My God. That's what he was saying. Having been through this experience where he'd gone out for 20 years and now with his coming back into the promised land and what to him seemed like a miraculous survival in the encounter with his brother. He's finally seeing this as the Lord is my Lord. The Lord is the one that I take personally as my God. So, we've got a question to ask here. Here is Jacob.

He'd been through a night and all day and a night and part of the next day trying to arrange for this encounter with his brother. He was terribly afraid. It has one of the strongest expressions in Scripture of the fear that he had because of anticipating the coming of his brother Esau.

So the question we have is, what really worked? After all that, what really worked with all the arranging and sequencing and everything that he did? Oh yes, and he prayed as well. What really worked with all that? He'd put in all these efforts into arranging the animals and getting them all in sequence and spacing them out and getting his family arranged and even having a company of people and animals towards the end that he split into two parts just to make it tougher for having Esau wipe out the whole group.

In the end, Esau didn't understand any of that. It didn't make any sense to him. He was just puzzled about the whole thing. The 400 men were just with him, not there for an attack. They weren't even there to attack the animals. Apparently, he didn't even touch them. It was only reluctantly that Esau accepted them.

In the end, what really worked is what we look back in chapter 32, Jacob prayed. Jacob prayed. All the efforts, all the plans, all the scheming, All the ambassadors and lines of flocks of goats and sheep and camels and oxen and everything else, none of that worked. In the end, what worked is he prayed. Right here in chapter 32, verse 11. He prayed to the Lord, deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him that he will come and attack me and the mothers with the children.

That's what worked. All the rest of it was foolishness. All the rest of it was his own plans and efforts and strategies to stay safe. Maybe. So we've got a question here. Can God start answering prayer even before we've prayed? Can he do that? Or does he have to wait until we've prayed and then he can start acting? Is that the way it works? Which one is it? Let's take a look.

Jacob's long parade here didn't seem to impact Esau's attitude at all. He was just baffled by the whole thing. So we can't credit Jacob's parade of animals and people to have done anything. The only thing that seems to have made any difference at all was the prayer. It doesn't seem from the account that the Lord only began to work softening Esau's heart just when Jacob prayed. Esau didn't have some sudden change of heart, and unlike with Laban, there's no instance here that the Lord suddenly appeared to Esau or put something in the way to change him.

It appears from this account that the Lord had been working on Esau's heart long before. long before, perhaps even years before. And I would say even very likely. The Lord had been working for a long time on Esau's heart. And Jacob's prayer came late in the game, but the Lord answered it nonetheless. Principle here, God can answer prayer and do both spiritual and physical things in our lives outside of our own time frame. and even outside of our own lifetime. The Lord does not wait until we begin praying to begin acting. After all, He knows well ahead of time that you're going to pray, right? So He can respond to your prayer long, long before you pray, if respond is the right word. Isn't that something? Think about this.

Christ died for my sins. How long ago did He die for my sins? About 20 centuries. He died for my sins. I hadn't even been born to sin yet. He died for my sins well in advance. God acted before I said I believe. Here's another one. You've been identified with Christ in His death and His burial, His resurrection, His ascension and seeding. That's only true of believers, by the way. But I didn't believe until almost 20 centuries after these events.

The Lord is not restricted by time. He can act in whatever time frame He sees fit. The Lord can begin answering prayer and doing and dealing with things in my life and in yours well before we begin believing or asking about it. He can do that. Yes, he can. Here in Genesis 32, deliver me, I pray. The delivering had already been done. The delivering had already been done.

Here in Genesis 32, he prayed not only deliver me, but when Jacob prayed, he says, Lord, I'm calling upon your faithfulness. And the Lord had already told him, I'll be faithful. I'll carry these things out. The Lord already had His promises that He had given to Abraham, to Isaac, and now to Jacob. Already, long ago, those were already there. The Lord can act well ahead of the time when we think we need Him. He's able to do that. Back in Genesis 28, He reminded the Lord of what he said, and here is what the Lord had told Jacob.

Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And in you and in your descendants, all the families of the earth be blessed. Guess what? We're part of the families of the earth that are blessed. The Lord's going to take care of it. You can count on it. He's good for his promise. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. You will get there. Count on it.

Ultimately, Jacob didn't even need to be afraid. But the Lord was long before answering Jacob's prayer. You think about what had happened during the life of Jacob. The Lord was shepherding Jacob the shepherd. The Lord was shepherding Jacob the shepherd long, long before this intense event with Esau. This event that got Esau really wrapped up in intense emotions. The Lord was there all the time when Jacob was presented with his surprise wife situation. The Lord was there all along as Jacob had more children. And the Lord was there all along and had dealt with it well in advance, shepherding Jacob. Shepherding Jacob, even at that very moment when Jacob was terribly afraid. And you know, in our own lives, the Lord is shepherding us too. He is the shepherd of our souls.

I think that's key for us to look at. We've got some things nationally and internationally that are rocking a lot of people's world. And the rocking may not be done. We don't know. The Lord does, doesn't He? But in the midst of that, just like with Jacob, just like with Jacob, the Lord is shepherding our souls. That's what He's in the process of doing.

And the things that we fear, It may in fact be the very things that he has worked long ago for our own benefit that we might learn from him. It may be that we've had some time wandering away and still he comes back after us. It may be that he has to carry us. through some pretty tough and difficult circumstances, either on the grand scale or maybe just personally, things that we individually are going through. Dangers, whether they're perceived or real, as we saw here in this account with Jacob, perceived, but whether perceived or real, those are a part of the shepherding that the Lord is doing. He will protect us from what protection we need, and He will guide us along the way. He will indeed be the shepherd of our soul in the midst of these things.

And I think this is great news for us to count upon here this morning. Certainly things that hit the headlines and certainly things that grab our attention are some things that are very concerning. Aside from that, you may have things in your own life that don't hit the headlines but concern you nonetheless.

The Lord is able for these things because He is the Shepherd of our soul. These things are not accidental and happenstance. These are things that the Lord Himself is doing and allowing because He is the Shepherd of our soul. And the very things that we most need, He's there and He's already dealing with the things that we fear. He is already beginning to answer. He has already done what we so greatly need. Isn't that good news?

Isn't that wonderful to know that he is the shepherd of our soul? that is going to happen today, next week, the months and years ahead, there is nothing that's outside of the Lord's shepherding of each one of us. And this is wonderful, wonderful news for us to comfort each other with and to look to the Lord and thank Him for. Let's take a minute to pray.

Lord, as we look at these truths and see the account where over several chapters you have shepherded this man Jacob through things that he did where he acknowledged your working and gifting in his life. And at the same time, Lord, we also look at these things and we see the lessons he learned. But you were always faithful. always faithful to the things that you promised him. And as we saw here, you had already begun to answer Jacob's prayer long before he asked it. And Lord, it's the relationship with you that you long for, that fellowship between ourselves and yourself.

And through these various events, cause our ears to attune to your voice, cause the eyes of our hearts to look to you through the midst of these things, no matter how shaken the world may be. We just pray that you would draw us to learn from you and trust you through it all. In Jesus' name, Amen.