Beloved, I'm going to go a little different direction with my Father's Day sermon today. Because usually, I tell you what my Father's Day sermons have been for the last 30 years of ministry. You guys stink, you're doing a bad job, or nations are going to hell because you're not doing your job.
You better do better. Happy Father's Day. And now I'm running into a lot of men inside the church and outside the church who feel like failures. Really, it's husbands and fathers. My kids don't walk with the Lord. Is it because I was a bad father? My kids are on drugs. It may be because I was a bad father. My kids, my family, and everything is a mess. And looking back, Chad, is it because I was a bad father? Maybe, maybe yes, maybe no.
I don't know enough about your story to be able to make that call. But I do know that there are a lot of men struggling with a sense of failure as fathers. I got to remind you, some of the greatest men of God in the Bible struggled in this area of fatherhood. Noah, did you know that Noah got drunk and cussed his kids out?
You can get her pregnant, and then that'll be our kid. I always think it's funny. Noah listened to her. He did what she said. And then afterwards, she gets mad at Abraham. She gets mad at Abraham. Why'd you have an affair with this lady?
Because you told me to have an affair with this lady. He wasn't the best father. Isaac was a passive father that showed favoritism. Moses messed up as a father. He didn't do rudimentary things as a Jewish father like to circumcise his own son, and it got God angry at Moses.
We know David's story. He messed up as a father. And today we're studying a man named Jacob, who, again, was used greatly by God, but he was not a good father at all.
And so I'm saying that to some of you men today who look back on your life and you have regrets as a father. I should have done better. I shouldn't have done this.
I should have done that. Let me tell you about the God we serve. God calls us how many things to work together for good? To those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.
We serve a God that can take your failures and turn them into victories. In fact, one of Michelangelo's most famous sculptures is this. It's called the Pieta.
Have you ever heard of this? The Pieta is a sculpture of Mary holding Jesus dead after his crucifixion. In fact, I think this is the only sculpture that Michelangelo actually signed himself. In 1972, a man broke past security and he went to this sculpture and he just shattered it. He tore it to pieces with a hammer. It was all over the floor, shards of marble all over the place. It was more than 100 pieces. A team of experts and specialists were called in to look at this masterpiece and they were asked, can you put this thing back together?
And these experts and these specialists painstakingly, I think it took over a year, put these pieces, large pieces, small pieces, microscopic pieces back together and they recreated in essence that masterpiece. And I read that story and I'm reminded that we serve a God that can take all the shattered pieces, the mess ups, the mistakes, and put you back together and recreate a masterpiece. That's the kind of God we serve. And so I want you to turn, if you would, to Genesis 32. Genesis 32.
Now here's the background of this story. You've got twins, Jacob and Esau. They're twins and Esau, he's a tough guy.
He's a rugged man's man. Jacob, the other twin, he's quiet, he's sneaky, he's not a like, I don't like, nobody likes him. I don't like Jacob.
He's kind of a wormy, sleazy, quiet, sneaky guy. Esau, tough and strong. Jacob's kind of the mama's boy and he kind of flies under the radar. And now Isaac, the father, he's old, he's blind, and Jacob sneaks into his room and again, Isaac can't see and so Isaac says, who are you? Jacob goes, I'm Esau.
I'm the older brother. And he convinces his father to write his brother out of the will and sign everything over to him. He's a very manipulative man. And that messed Esau up. When Esau finds out, his brother took advantage of his father's blindness and told his father to sign everything over to him and it cannot be undone.
It messes Esau up. He's just been robbed of his inheritance. In fact, I'm acquainted with a man that happened to him a few years ago. His family had a lot of money. He was struggling.
His sister comes in and has his father, who has dementia, he's on his deathbed, sign everything over to the sister. And it messed this guy up. He spent months in the nuthouse.
It messed him up so bad. And that's what's happening with Esau. And Esau says to his brother, you better watch your back. Because I'm going to kill you.
And Jacob flees Esau. He knows his brother means what he says. He knows that guy's going to kill me. And so for 20 years, he's gone from his family. And now he's decided, my father's still alive, but he's in his last days. I'm going to go back to see my father.
20 years after he robbed his brother of his inheritance. He now decides to go back. And so he and his family are going back to the homeland and some servants come up to Jacob. And they said, Jacob, time out. We sent some scouts ahead of you. We got bad news.
He said, what? He said, your brother Esau, with 400 men, are on their way to slaughter you and the family. And so that night, obviously, Jacob can't sleep.
Tomorrow there's going to be a battle and his family is going to be wiped out. And so he crosses this brook. It's modern day Jordan. It's called the Jabach River.
Here's a picture of that. When we take people to Jordan, we cross this little creek or this bridge or this little river here somewhere along the riverbank. This story takes place. The night before Jacob is about to go to battle with his brother.
He has a visitor right here on the banks of this river. Genesis 32, 24. Then Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. And he saw that he had not prevailed against him. So he touched the socket of his thigh. And so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.
He literally takes his hip out of joint. And he said, let me go, for the dawn is breaking. So this stranger is wrestling. He touches the socket of his thigh. Jacob is holding on to him. And this man says, let me go. And he says, let me go.
I will not let you go unless you bless me. So this strange man that's been wrestling with him all night said to him, what is your name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, your name shall no longer be Jacob but Israel. For you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him and said, well then please tell me your name.
But he said, why is it that you asked my name? And he blessed him there. So Jacob now watches, called the place Peniel for he said, I have seen God face to face yet my life has been delivered.
Did you catch that? He said, I realize I'm not just wrestling with some strange man. This was God himself. Verse 31. And the sun rose up upon him just as he crossed over Peniel and he was limping on his thigh. Therefore to this day the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh because he touched the socket of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip.
Now I want you to look at verse 28. Jacob, this man says, Jacob, you have wrestled, you have struggled all your life. You fought God, you fought others. Jacob, you're a man who has had a constant struggle in life. Your depravity, your sneakiness has caused you a lot of problems, Jacob, all your life. Jacob had conflicts with his father, lied to him to steal the inheritance. Jacob later on has conflict with his father-in-law. And now he's even struggling with God himself. It's a lifetime of struggling and conceit.
Some of you fellows can identify with Jacob. All my life I have wrestled with this sin issue. All my life I have wrestled with my tears. I have a temper. All my life I have wrestled. I have struggled. Now here's the problem. I've told you this before. We think we're the only person that wrestles and struggles.
I've pastored long enough to be able to tell you this. Everybody is wrestling. Everybody is struggling. You think everybody else has their act together. You're the only messed up people.
We're all messed up people. Then Kate Spade, did you all remember this? She committed suicide. Right after she committed suicide, commentator Brit Hume of Fox News tweeted something that I thought was very interesting.
He said as a result of this news that she had committed suicide, he said, listen, everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind always, everybody rests Everybody struggles. You're not the only Jacob wrestling and struggling.
We all struggle and we all have our fights. This has been years ago, so y'all probably remember this, but years ago, I thought about the whole phenomenon of Facebook, I don't know if y'all remember this, I put up a Facebook picture of my family on vacation. It's my three kids. They're good looking kids, beautiful kids. And they're smiling and I put that up and I said, now watch this, when my wife puts this on Facebook, some of y'all are gonna think, I wish my kids were just like the Harvey kids.
They're smiling, they're happy, they're on vacation, they're even hugging each other in the picture. I said, now do you wanna know what happened two minutes before this picture? I said, two minutes before this picture, my daughter is griping and complaining, it's hot here in Charleston, I hate sharing a hotel room with my brothers. My younger brother kept needling and pestering his older brother. His older brother finally hauls off and slaps him in the head, so he's upset, he's upset, she's upset, and here's what I said. I said, kids, I'm done with this. This must be a family vacation. We went out of our way, we spent all this money, I'm about to spank all three of you, put you back in the car, take you to Raleigh.
Before we do that, we're gonna take a picture. So here's my point. Your family is not the only family struggling. Fellas, you're not the only men fighting your battles. Ladies, you're not the only ones struggling and being a good, godly mother.
We all have our struggles, and Father's Day, I think, reminds us of these struggles. We have men struggling, look, I'm gonna say this. There's a unique set of struggles when it comes to men and fathers. There are insecurities that men and fathers have that maybe ladies can't understand.
There are moral issues that some men in this church are struggling with. Some of you guys here, with the breakdown of the family, you come from families with no fathers. You don't know how to be a father, that's your struggle.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do because I didn't have a father to show me how to be a godly father. And society doesn't help. Look, you can say this is a conspiracy theory if you want, there is a concerted war on men in our society. You don't have to look any further than Star Wars, this new Acolyte series. Star Wars now has been produced and taken over by a bunch of man haters.
And this latest, have y'all been keeping up with the Star Wars, the latest episode? It's about a colony of communist lesbian space witches. It's just weird.
And so another one of the struggles we have is we have a society that's trying to tell us be a man. And we don't know what that means. Now I'm gonna plagiarize, I'm about to plagiarize right now. Okay, so I don't, a local pastor plagiarizes this term.
I'm telling you right now, plagiarizing this term. This comes from Pastor Mark Driscoll, this doesn't come from me. But Mark Driscoll, I know he's a controversial pastor, but he's right on this thing. He said, when we say be a man, one of the struggles of our men is we don't know what that means. We have all these weird ideas of masculinity. You know, one weird persona or one weird idea of masculinity is what Driscoll calls macho Mike. That's what it means to be a man, macho Mike. Macho Mike means you have no emotions. If you're a man, you burp, you have sex, and you're fixated on jokes about excrement. That's not a man, that's a chimpanzee.
There's not a woman in this church saying, dear God, send me that, okay. Well, another view of masculinity is successful steward. Masculinity means, well, you're successful, you have a great job, a great car, great salary, pretty wife, that's masculinity. Well, then you have bossy Bob. Masculinity means you tell everybody what to do.
He bosses his employees around, he bosses his wife around, he bosses his kids around. He comes to the church and wants to boss the pastor around. The pastor doesn't put up with it, so he tells everybody, I can't find a good church, which means I can't find a pastor stupid enough to do whatever I tell him to do, and he eventually goes and starts his own home church. And then you have hyper spiritual Henry, that's masculinity. Well, we have that in the Church of Christ. Biblical masculinity means you wear Christian t-shirts, you have Christian bumper stickers. You know, he asks his kids, hey, why don't you ever have your friends over the house?
And they say, well, because all you wanna do is argue about Bible translation, circumcision, and Canaanites, and we don't really want to expose our kids to that stuff. And then finally, you have passive Patrick. Patrick tried hard to be a good father, tried hard to be a good husband, he kept messing up, and so, you know what, I'm just done, I'm gonna quit. And he checks out. His wife and his kids run all over him. The wife rules the family, she's mean. You can know you got a passive Patrick because when the family, the husband and wife, meets with the teachers, or they meet with the pastors about an issue, the wife rails and goes berserk and screams and goes crazy, while Patrick just kind of sits there in the corner.
I've had that before. And you have all these weird ideas of what it means to be a man, and I'm just telling you, there's a lot of struggling in our society today, particularly when it comes to fathers and men. So this is Jacob. How does Jacob, who's now a man that's struggling, he's dishonest, he's a liar, and his messed up depravity is about to get his family killed. His whole family is gonna get wiped out because he couldn't stay within the guard rails 20 years ago, he made a stupid mistake 20 years ago, and now it's gonna cost his entire family.
How does Jacob handle being an imperfect father? Fellas, if you're like me today, and you're wrestling, you're struggling, and you wanna be a good man, and a godly father, and a godly husband, let me give you one word, and we see this word all over the Bible. You ready for this word, this is it right here. I am now finding that this one word will get you out of a lot of trouble, and that word is humility. You humble yourself. People have all kinds of weird ideas. When I say humility, you got all kinds of weird ideas.
We overthink this thing. Humility is two things. Number one, knowing who you really are, and number two, knowing who God really is. And that's how Jacob handles this struggle is through humility. Number one, Jacob understands and accepts who he is.
Look at verse 27. So this man's wrestling with Jacob, okay? And again, we know that this man is God, and God asks Jacob, who are you? What's your name?
Now let me ask you something. If he's God, do you think God knows his name already? So why is the God who knows everything asking Jacob, what is your name? It's because Jacob, here's what Jacob means. You know what the word Jacob means? It literally means, it has the Hebrew word heal, like heal, it means the heal grabber. The one who cheats and cuts corners.
Like you know if you're watching an NFL game, and the wide receiver's going out for a pass, and he's about to get it, and the safety kind of grabs his jersey, or you're in a race, a marathon race, and this guy's about to win, and you come and you grab the back of his shirt so that you can win, that's what it means by heal grabber. Jacob, what is your name? It's Jacob.
Jacob, what does that mean? It means I'm a sneaky, dishonest man. I admit, I'm a liar.
I admit, I cut corners. I am Jacob, I'm a sneaky, dishonest man. In verse 27, when God asks again, who are you? Do you know the last time we see that question being asked of Jacob? It was 20 years before, when Jacob goes into his blind father's room, and his father says, who are you? In other words, Jacob is being reminded right now of the biggest mistake he made in his life.
I'm a sneaky, deceitful man who 20 years ago had my father say, who are you, and I lied and stole my brother's inheritance. See, fellas, if we're gonna be the men God has called us to be, number one, we have to admit, we don't have our act together. We are messed up guys, we have good days, we have bad days, sometimes we win, sometimes we stumble.
Number one, we have to admit, we are not perfect guys, we're messed up men. And then the second part of humility is not only knowing who you are, what's the second part? Knowing who God is. It's kinda interesting, verse 30. So Jacob named the place Binyel because he said, I have seen God face to face and my life has been delivered.
It's interesting. Ancient Judaism had this thing, it's called the concept of the two powers. Here's what Jews would say, God is so powerful, you can't even look at him or you'd be struck dead. Much less, how do you get the God of the universe who's bigger than the universe, how can you get him in one finite form? And so they'd say, sometimes the God of the universe will take on these finite human forms here.
That was the concept of the two powers. In the New Testament, we don't have time to go into this, Jesus said just enough to indicate that these times in the Old Testament when the God of the universe would manifest in human form, Jesus said, that was actually me. See what's happening? Jacob is actually wrestling with Jesus Christ himself right now.
And look at what God does, verse 25. He touched the socket of his thigh and so the socket was now dislocated. It's just incredibly painful. Not only is it incredibly painful, Jacob is supposed to do battle the next morning. Now he's disabled. You can't do battle when your hip is out of joint.
It's painful and now he's helpless. And what now Jacob has done has gotten to the point where he has to say, I can't fight this battle anymore. I'm coming against my enemy tomorrow morning.
In the old days, I thought I could pull myself up out of the bootstraps and do this myself. I can't fight this battle. Implication, God, you have to fight this battle for me. You are now in charge, you're now in control. I'm not in charge, I'm not in control.
I've tried, I've fought, I've striven all my life. I'm just a messed up man, God. And if you don't help me, I can't help myself. God, I just turn it all over to you.
That's humility. And fellas, I want you to listen to me when you finally come to the point where you realize who you really are in your flesh but who God really is. That he loves you, he cares for you, he's in charge. You can keep fighting if you want.
You can keep wrestling with him if you want. But when you finally come to that point when you say, God, I can't do it anymore, I turn it over to you, that's where God steps in and starts fighting the battle for you. Listen to me, that's the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm just giving you the gospel right there. Gospel right there is we all messed up people who deserve hell, we're not as good as we think we are, but he is Jesus. He's the one who died on the cross for our sins and I just admit my messed upness and I turn my life over to you, Jesus Christ. That's the gospel. One of my heroes, you've heard me talk about David Wilkerson before?
Wilkerson's one of my heroes. What I like about him is in his early days he preached holiness, righteousness, you gotta get right with God. He preached hell, hot, holiness, purity.
And I was reading his son's, Gary, his son's biography of his father. He said, for the end of my dad's life, he began to understand the concept of grace. And he said in 1986, he's preaching in Poland and he's preaching on the holiness of God. Dave Wilkerson said, in the Old Testament, if you're gonna bring a sacrifice to God, you'll bring a lamb without blemish to the sacrifice. So if you're gonna come to God, don't bring him a heart that's sinful and expect to be acceptable to him. Why do you think a holy God is gonna let you come with all your filth and your sin and your mess? No, you gotta bring a holy lamb to God. And then he said, all of a sudden the Holy Spirit stopped him right there on the platform. He's in the middle of a crusade, all these thousands, and he stopped him. And he said to his Polish translator, he said, I want you to translate everything I'm about to say. And he turned to the audience and he said, everything I've just said to you is wrong. Don't listen to me. You don't have to bring your perfection to God.
Nothing you have has any merit. No, bring your sin, bring your brokenness, bring your pitifulness to God. And that's what Jacob did right there. God, I don't have anything to give you but this messed up, duplicitous, lying spirit. I'm a messed up guy. Father, I can't do anything with it.
I'm gonna bring this to you right now. When that happened, there are two words we throw around in Christianity. Mercy and grace. And when Jacob finally comes to God and says, I'm a messed up person, I can't do it on my own, God, I surrender to you, God gives Jacob both those things. He gives him mercy. See, Jacob should have been killed by Esau the next day. He should have been slaughtered.
What happens the next day? Esau, his brother comes up, says, give me a hug. And they hug and they weep and his brother forgives him. That's mercy. Jacob, this messed up man, is not only given mercy.
Look, mercy is not getting what you should get, okay? Grace is getting what you shouldn't get. God gave him mercy.
He should have been killed, instead he lives. God gives him grace. What do you mean by grace? Well, God does several things with this.
Again, this is a messed up man. When he finally admits I'm a messed up person, God does several things. Verse 28, he changes his name.
You are no longer the heel grabber, the liar, the duplicitous one. You are now Israel, the prince of God, and I'm gonna make a great nation out of you. And if you look at the succeeding chapters, he blesses and blesses and blesses. Why would God do that? Why would God bless a liar? Why would God bless a messed up person? Because our God is a God of mercy and of grace, and God gives us what we don't deserve when we come in humility to him. He gives him mercy and he gives him grace. And Jacob's life is changed and he humbles himself before God. And fellas, God wants to do that with some of you today.
Fathers, God wants to bless you, he wants to bless your family, he wants to bless your business, he wants to bless your finances. Even if you don't deserve it, there's something powerful about saying I know who I am. I'm not a perfect person. But I also know who you are. You're God. And I can't keep fighting these battles on my own. Oh God, help me. There's something powerful about that.
And beloved, I want you to understand this. After this, the battle's not over. Jacob has to fight every single day for the rest of his life. See, a lot of us think that when God steps in and takes over, we can kinda just sit back and relax. No, there's still gonna be a battle going on. If you look at the chapters after this, Jacob had to keep fighting battles until the day he dies.
Look at what's gonna be. Being a man of God is an everyday battle. You'll never give up. And sometimes you make it, sometimes you mess up. Proverbs 24, 16 says this. The godly may trip up seven times, but they gonna get back up again.
That's that Jacob lifestyle. I know who I am. I know who God is. And by the grace of God, I'm gonna start fighting this battle with the power of the Holy Spirit and I might get knocked down seven times, but I'm gonna get up seven times. It's gonna be a battle for the rest of your life. The battle's not over till you get to the other side. You know, I was, let me say something to you. You middle, us, how does that say you? Us middle-aged and older men today. Just cause you passed 50 doesn't mean the battle's over.
You're gonna keep fighting that battle. I was talking to a Christian leader last week. Not at our church, but he's a leader of pastors. And I asked him, I said what's this weird phenomenon that I'm now seeing of 60 and even 70-year-old pastors falling morally in ministry?
You know, there's another news article about another 70-year-old pastor that had to resign his church this past week. I said what's this weird, I don't understand that. These 75-year-old guys having an affairs? First of all, it's just gross.
Old, wrinkly, whatever, I'm like I don't understand that. I said what's going on? And here's what he said. He said something very wise.
He said here's what I think's going on. A lot of these guys get to be 60 and 70 and say well the battle's over. I'm a 60-year-old man now, I'm a 70-year-old man. Battle's over. And they drop their guard.
Drop the guard, they're dead meat. Listen to me, admit who you are. I'm a messed up person. Admit who Jesus is. He died on the cross for my sins and came back to life and I can't fight this battle on my own. Jesus, I need you.
Do that, but you don't stop fighting that battle until the day you die. I remember several years ago we had a funeral for a man named Bill Henderson. Bill was an Iwo Jima survivor.
I think he died at age 98. And Bill loved to mentor young men, young inner city men. And at his funeral we had one of these young inner city men that Bill had mentored.
And keep in mind, Bill was 98 years old when this happens. He'd been mentoring this young guy and so the guy come and spoke and he said one of the wisest thing Mr. Henderson ever said to me was a 98-year-old man. He said I asked him, Mr. Henderson, I'm so struggling. This guy's like 16, 17, I'm struggling with my thought life.
I'm struggling, kind of keeping my eyes pure. He said to him, does the battle ever get any easier? And Mr. Henderson said, I don't know.
You'll have to ask somebody older than me. There's gonna be a fight. Just because you admit who you are and admit who God is, doesn't mean you can sit back. We're gonna have to fight, Jacobs, for the rest of our lives.
In fact, J.C. Ryle, he was a great preacher from the 1800s. He has a great quote, he said this. Satan, the foe that we have to fight, he takes no vacation, he never slumbers and he never sleeps. So long as we have breath in our bodies, we must keep on our armor and remember that we are fighting in enemy territory.
He said one old godly man in his dying moments on his death bed said, quote, even on the brink of crossing the Jordan, I still find Satan nibbling at my heels. So men, we must fight till we die. Can we all stand right now? Men and women, this might be a good time to bow before a holy God and do those two things. Admit we're Jacobs, we're all messed up people. I told you before, if you wanna know what cross assembly is, it's a messed up man preaching to a bunch of messed up people, that's cross assembly. It might be good for a few moments just to admit to God, we're Jacobs, we struggle and we fight.
It might be good to take a few moments and say, but God, my hip is out of joint. I can't fight in this battle on my own. I can't come against Satan on my own. I can't fight the forces of hell on my own. And so God, I submit to you, Lord Jesus, just take over.
Can we bow right now? Father, in the name of Jesus, we admit we're a bunch of messed up people who don't deserve mercy or grace. Father, we deserve hell, but I thank you, Father. We don't fight these battles alone. We don't lead our families alone. We don't try to serve you alone.
We don't try to be good people alone. Father, remind us right now, you are God, you're in charge, you're in control and you're right beside us fighting our battles with us. Father, you will never leave us. You will never forsake us. Jesus, I thank you that you are the leader of the forces of heaven and hell itself cannot defeat you. And you are on our side and we are on your side. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for that victory that we have in you. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.
Can we do something right now? It's really interesting. In Exodus, I think it's Exodus 17, God reveals yet another one of his many names. He says, I am Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah the banner. Now in those days, military units, battalions had their own banner. So if you're in the battlefield and you kind of get separated from your group, you can look at that banner over there and say, no, that's my battalion. And you can run back to your battalion and fight with your battalion.
God says, I am Jehovah Nissi. I am that military banner that hangs over you. And when you come against Satan and demons and the forces of hell, you won't be alone. You're in my battalion.
You're on the winning side. Greater is he who's in you than he who's in this world. Y'all believe that? Let's raise our hands and raise our voices and praise our commander in chief, Jesus Christ. Let's praise him right now. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. Come on, sing in faith. speaking to the troops I'm reminding you that there's a battle going on out there but you're a bunch of losers you're not on the losing side now you are not just conquerors more than conquers through him who loves you and so captain Chad Harvey now says to the troops because I they much out that road the other kid he and ha I don't I and the heck out the whole to share the lack which means troops be bolder be strong don't be afraid and don't be terrified of anything why because the Lord your God is gonna be with you everywhere you go in the name of the father and of the son and the Holy Spirit we pray
