Begging for a Blessing

They abandon their families, abandon their children, because they are abandoning the blessing. Dr. Tony Evans tells men who fail to pass on a spiritual heritage to their children that it's not too late.

I don't care how long you've been defeated as a man. Jesus Christ is standing over you today saying, Get up, because Jesus loves you. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of The Urban Alternative. Blessings come from God, but not just from God. Today, Dr. Evans will touch on the importance of the blessings we pass on and what to do if they were never passed on to us.

Let's turn to Genesis chapter 25 as we join him. Fatherlessness dominates our cultural landscape today. Forty percent of all children in our country are raised without their biological father.

In the African American community, 72 percent of children born are born to single parents. Whether you're looking at crime statistics or dropout statistics or teenage pregnancy statistics or poverty statistics, over and over and over again, the dominating reality of fatherlessness overwhelms us. Now fatherlessness comes in many shapes and many forms. Some are fatherless because they've been abandoned by their father. Their father sired a child that they were not willing to take responsibility for. Other forms of fatherlessness is that the father may be there, but he might as well not be there because he's not accepted the responsibility of fatherhood. And so what we have developed is a generation of young people, children, who are growing up in a fatherless environment, and so they go seeking pseudo-fatherhood, things that look like it could be a father for me, whether it's a gang or whether it's their posse or their homies or whether some other influence that's not in their best interest. Fatherlessness has become the daunting, overwhelming, painful reality of our culture that is fraying us.

When God created man, before he gave him a wife and gave him children, he gave him the responsibility to act on his behalf. But now we have men who are simply satisfied to say, I'm not happy. Let me take a moment to talk about happy. I'm not against happy. I'm for happy. You should want to be happy.

There's no benefit to being miserable. On the other hand, happy is not your first order of business. Your first order of business is to be responsible, whether or not you're happy, because the measure of a man is his acceptance of responsibility under God as he seeks to be happy.

But what we are having today are men, because they're no longer happy, abandoning responsibility. And so we are finding ourselves enveloped in a cursed environment because of the crisis of fatherlessness. In our passage today, we have a son begging for the blessing of his father. Esau is begging for a blessing. You must strip your mind about the casual use of the word bless. We say, you know, God bless you. I bless you.

We use the word fairly casually today many times. But when Esau was asking daddy to bless him, he wasn't just saying, daddy say, I bless you. No, the blessing was speaking about something else. It was speaking about the continuity of the covenant.

A symbol for the word blessing was covenantal continuity. Let me explain what I mean. It is my hope that every head of a household here has a will. If you do not have a will, you're not operating responsibly. A will simply says, this is what I want to happen with what I've been entrusted with to pass on to the next generation. A will speaks of an inheritance, usually related to stuff. In fact, folk gather when wills are read, with their fingers crossed, hoping that there's a little something something in there for them.

Or more importantly, a whole lot of something something in there for them. In our story, Jacob, the younger, wants the blessing. So he concocts a plan with his mother, Rebekah, to steal the blessing from the older son, Esau. And so, while Esau went out to hunt to get food in order to bring it back to his father for him to get the blessing, Rebekah told Jacob, look, what you do is you go get me a goat, I'll cook the meal. You go put on your brother's clothes, because your father can't see. It says his eyes were dim.

He won't be able to see. You go in there with your brother's clothes and you bring the meal that your brother's supposed to bring and let him bless you. So Jacob does that. He goes gets the goat.

The mother cooks the goat. He goes puts on his brother's clothes. He walks in. His father, Isaac, says, who's that? Who's that?

Who's that? And Jacob says, no, it's me. It's Esau, your oldest son. He says, I have your food. He says, come close to me. He says, now you feel like Esau, but you sound like Jacob. It says in verse 23, he did not recognize him. And so he blesses him. I'll talk about that in a moment.

All I want you to get now is how critical the blessing was. He was willing to join partners with his mama against his daddy in order to get it. Because this thing involved his future. Now this raises the question, because obviously Jacob is wrong and Rebecca is wrong because they're tricking Isaac. Yet throughout the Bible, God praises Jacob and not Esau, even though Jacob is doing the wrong thing.

The question is why? Well, you need chapter 25 to answer that. If you go back a page to chapter 25, verse 27. When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field.

He's the athlete. Jacob was a peaceful man, living in tents. Now, Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game, because he's the athlete. And Rebecca loved Jacob. When Jacob had cooked stew, because he's hanging with mama. So when he had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field and was famished, starving. So Esau says to Jacob, verse 30, please let me have a swallow of that red stuff there.

For I am famished. Verse 31, Jacob says, first sell me your birthright. Sell me the rights of the firstborn and I give you some need. Esau said, behold, I'm about to die.

I'm so hungry. So of what use is a birthright to me if I'm a star of the death? And Jacob said, first swear to me that you'll give me your birthright, the rights of the firstborn. So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew and he ate and drank and rose and went on his way.

Here it is. Thus Esau despised his birthright. Esau thought so little of his birthright, he was willing to give it up for some food. As far as Esau was concerned, stay with me, there was no connection between my birthright and my blessing.

My birthright is over here and my blessing is over there. But when you read Hebrews chapter 12 verses 16 and 17, it says, don't be like the immoral, godless Esau who sold his birthright for food. The problem with Esau is he was only present oriented. He only wanted what he wanted now because he wasn't thinking about the future later.

One of the problems we have among men is they're present oriented. I'm not happy now. I don't want the responsibility now. It's all about now.

It's not all about now. It is about you passing forward the blessing. That is the divine statement of God from you to you and through you because you are future oriented. He gets tricked, but God doesn't interfere with it because he didn't value his birthright. Now you may say, I don't have a birthright.

Oh yeah, you do. If you've accepted Jesus Christ, you've been born again. You possess a birthright. There are rights and privileges that come with your new birth, but those rights and privileges incur responsibility. And sometimes you'll be happy and sometimes you won't be happy, but that's what that's got to do. Sometimes you want to work and sometimes you don't want to work.

You better get up if you want to eat. In other words, responsibility has to function whether or not happiness is part of the equation. Although there's nothing wrong with being happy. But that means you must be future oriented if you're going to pass on the blessing.

So what does that blessing include? We'll find out when Dr. Evans returns to continue our message in just a moment. Stay with us. If you've ever wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise, we want to tell you about an incredible opportunity you won't want to miss. Happening between August 6 and 13. Join Tony Evans and the Urban Alternative on an unforgettable journey through this unspoiled paradise.

From the majestic mountain peaks to the mighty forests and green meadows teeming with wildlife. Plus, you'll hear life changing teaching from Dr. Evans and other gifted teachers. Those dates again are August 6 to 13, but rooms are filling up quick. So reserve your spot today at TonyEvans.org. As a way of following up on today's lesson, Dr. Evans has written a powerful book that's helped thousands of other men move beyond an ineffective and feeble faith. It's called Kingdom Men Rising, and it can inspire you to break past the obstacles of helplessness, boredom, and regret.

And instead replace them with power, significance, and influence. We're excited to be able to offer this book to you today in a special double package deal. Along with this inspiring and empowering book, you can also receive all 12 full length messages in Tony's current series by the same name, Kingdom Men Rising. Together, these resources can help you live up to your highest potential while you learn from the real life struggles and challenges of other men as they seek to fulfill their purpose for God's kingdom. Right now, when you make a contribution to support Dr. Evans' work through the Urban Alternative, we'll send these resources to you as our gift. Our way of saying thanks for making this ministry possible. Just visit TonyEvans.org to get the details.

Or you can reach out to one of our friendly resource team members to help you with your request when you call us at 1-800-800-3222. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. Now let's get back to Dr. Evans with more of today's message.

And so we have Esau begging for a blessing. I mean, he's saying, please, Daddy. How many men here today were raised by a single mother? You were raised by a single mother.

Numbers of you. And praise God for the great job that so many of our single women do. But all a mother can be is the best mother she can be.

She was never meant to have dual roles when there should be a man in the picture. He says, Father, bless me. Because that's what the Father is supposed to do. He's supposed to pass it on. And the next generation should feel God all over them.

If you've got kids in your house, pass that on to me. Now what did the blessing include? In chapter 27, we're told, verse 28 and 29, May God give you of the dew of heaven, of the fatness of earth, of the abundance of grain and wine. May people serve you, and nations bow down to you. May you be master of your brethren, and may your mother's sons bow down to you.

Cursed is he who curses you, and blessed are those who bless you. God reached all the way back to the Abrahamic covenant. He passed that on to Isaac. Isaac is now passing it on to Jacob, where it should have been passed on to Ethar, who turned away his birthright.

You know what the covenant was? You know what the blessing was? Divine favor moving forward. Divine favor moving forward. The blessing was future inheritance from God.

Please notice the language. May God do this. May God do that. May God do that. May God do that.

See, that's where the blessing is missing. We're just saying, I want you to do this, and I want you to do that. Oh, you want to be a doctor. You want to be a lawyer. You want to be an engineer.

You want to be a teacher. Nothing wrong with that. But the blessing was what God would do. I want God to do this. I want God to do that. I want God to do the other. It was about God, God, God, God, God. Not just what I want for you or what you want for you, but what God wants for you. That was the blessing.

Because it would happen because of God. Whenever you see a caterpillar, it's got a glorious future. Now, I know what you're looking at right now ain't much. When that thing cocoons, it's going to be pretty, and it's going to take flight. We've got a generation of children who don't take flight. They're still crawling because they've never been blessed. They've never had the blessing stand over them to affirm them and to speak God into them, not just stuff for them, but God into them who will bring them the appropriate stuff. Your will must be more than stuff.

My will must be more than stuff. It must be God and the transfer of divine favor. When I was growing up in Baltimore, we went duck-pin bowling. Now, things were pretty rinky-dink.

This wasn't high-class bowling. And a lot of times, machines didn't fully work. So, pins, sometimes all of them wouldn't get picked up.

So, some would still be laying down. Other times, machines would pick them up, and one would drop out of it and fall back down. There was this guy. Now, you couldn't see him. All you could see was his feet. And all he went was from lane to lane picking up pins that the machine couldn't get. So, he running to this lane, running to that lane, running to this lane.

He picking up stuff that got knocked down, and that the machine couldn't pick up, so the next person to bowl. I don't care how long you've been knocked down. I know somebody who can pick you back up and set you right again because he wants you to have the blessing.

The forward-moving favor of God commuted to you, so you can commute it to yours. I've told the men how much I love Rocky 5. And I love all the Rockys, but really love Rocky 5. In Rocky 5, Rocky is retired because he's gotten bruised and beaten.

His eye is bad. He can't fight anymore in Rocky 5. He comes across a young upcoming fighter named Tommy Gunn. And Tommy Gunn has admired Rocky Balboa as he followed his career. And so they meet and become friends, and he says to Rocky Balboa, Rocky, Italian stallion, will you train me?

Well, I can say, well, yeah, I can stay in the fight game by helping you, so yeah, I'll train you. So Rocky works with him, and Tommy Gunn goes up the ladder, up the ladder, up the ladder, and becomes the heavyweight champion of the world due to the influence of Rocky Balboa. The movie comes down to the last 15 minutes. The whole movie zeroes in on that last 15 minutes. See, Tommy Gunn has now become the champion of the world and has gotten to his head.

So he's gotten a lot of money now, and he's gotten a lot of attention, a lot of notoriety in the news. So Tommy Gunn is living large, and he doesn't need Rocky anymore. In fact, he gets belligerent with Rocky. In that last 15 minutes, they're in a gathering, and Tommy Gunn hits Rocky Balboa's wife's husband, his brother-in-law.

I mean, he clocks him and knocks him down because of some argument they were having. Then Tommy Gunn insults Rocky and insults Rocky's son. Then Tommy Gunn dares Rocky to do anything about it. Rocky tears off his shirt, and the rumble begins. They out in the street fighting each other. It's a street fight.

The problem is, Tommy Gunn is too young, too strong, and too fast. And so while Rocky is doing the best he can, he can't keep up with this young guy, and so it comes down to a punch that Tommy Gunn throws, and he hits Rocky, and he sends Rocky down in the gutter beating man. While down and out, Rocky remembers.

Up on the screen above his head, it shows what he's thinking. So he thinks back to Rocky I and Rocky II. And he remembers Apollo Creed and how he fought and became champion of the world. And when he remembered Apollo Creed, he tried to get up, but he couldn't. Then he remembered Clubber Lang, Rocky III. And our Clubber Lang had beaten him, but how he fought back to win back the championship, and when he remembered, he tried to get up, but he couldn't. Then he remembered Ivan Drago, the Russian monster, and how he went over to Russia and defeated him on his own turf so that the Russians were singing the national anthem. And he remembered that, and he tried to get up, but he couldn't.

But then he remembered somebody else. He remembered his old coach, Mickey. Now, Mickey had died in Rocky IV. Mickey was already dead, but he remembers Mickey. When Mickey was standing over him saying, get up, get up, get up, you bum, because Mickey loves you. Now, that's when the music came on.

Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. Music comes on, and Rocky Balboa, he stands up. He shakes it off. Tommy Gunn is walking off in the distance. Rocky Balboa looks in the distance and says, yo, Tommy, one more round. He found strength he didn't have and power he didn't possess, and he was able to defeat the young buck. Why was he able to defeat him?

Because he remembered somebody who had died, who had then come alive again to remind him of what he could do. I don't care how long you've been down in the gutter as a man, how long you've been defeated as a man. Jesus Christ is standing over you today saying, get up, get up, because Jesus loves you. It's time to take your stand and being the man and father God has called you to be. Dr. Tony Evans, wrapping up a talk he calls Begging for a Blessing. And if you'd like to hear the entire content of today's message, including material we didn't have time to present on the air, this lesson is available in its entirety on both CD and digital download.

Better yet, you can get the complete content as a part of that special double offer I mentioned earlier, all 12 full-length messages in Tony's current series, bundled along with his powerful book, Kingdom Men Rising. We'll send them to you as our thank you gift when you help support this ministry with a financial contribution. Get all the details and make your request online at TonyEvans.org, where you can browse through our huge library of resources and sign up for Tony's free weekly email devotional. Again, that's TonyEvans.org. Or give us a call at 1-800-800-3222, where team members are standing by around the clock to help you with your resource request.

Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. You know, these last couple of years, we've all become very aware that we can catch something from those we come in contact with. But fortunately, not everything that's contagious is bad for us. In fact, there are many things we transmit that are helpful.

Kindness is one of them. And Dr. Evans encourages you to look for ways to spread it so others will see and do the same. Well, coming up Monday, if you were interested in flying a plane or performing surgery, you'd go to flight school or medical school. But where do men go to learn to be godly men? That's what Dr. Evans will be tackling next. I hope you'll join us for that. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.