NXR Podcast - SUNDAY SERMON - Quit LARPing & Be A Man - Pastor Jared Longshore
Aired: 2023-11-12
Duration: 48:01


=== Wrestling With God (02:52) ===

[00:00:00]  Greetings from Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.
[00:00:05]  I'm delighted to be here with you this morning to worship the Lord together with you.
[00:00:11]  The sermon text this morning is Genesis chapter 32, verse 24 through 32.
[00:00:18]  These are the words of God.
[00:00:23]  And Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.
[00:00:30]  And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh.
[00:00:35]  And the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him.
[00:00:39]  And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh.
[00:00:42]  And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me.
[00:00:47]  And he said unto him, What is thy name?
[00:00:50]  And he said, Jacob.
[00:00:52]  And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel.
[00:00:57]  For as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.
[00:01:03]  And Jacob asked him, And said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.
[00:01:08]  And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?
[00:01:13]  And he blessed him there.
[00:01:15]  And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.
[00:01:23]  And as he passed over Penuel, the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.
[00:01:30]  Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh unto this day, because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh.
[00:01:39]  In the sinew that shrank.
[00:01:42]  Let's pray.
[00:01:44]  Our Father, we thank you for your abundant kindness toward us.
[00:01:47]  We thank you that we can gather on this Lord's Day to worship you in spirit and in truth.
[00:01:54]  And we ask that you would speak to us now through your word and by your spirit, that you would convict us where we need to be convicted, you would encourage what needs to be encouraged.
[00:02:05]  We ask that you would strengthen our faith, that you would enlarge our hearts.
[00:02:09]  That you would help us to run in the way of your commands.
[00:02:12]  We pray all this in Jesus' name and amen.
[00:02:17]  So, scripture tells us that we are more than conquerors, and everybody kind of likes that idea.
[00:02:25]  That's the kind of thing that we put on our coffee mugs.
[00:02:28]  And yet, being a conqueror means that there are things that are standing in our way.
[00:02:39]  This is something that troubles us a little bit.
[00:02:41]  We like the idea of being conquerors, but then when it comes to actually looking at the obstacles that are out there in front of us, it can be discouraging.
[00:02:49]  But it ought not to be discouraging.
[00:02:51]  We are victors after all.

=== Avoiding The Real Fight (14:30) ===

[00:02:53]  And what good are victors if they have nothing to vanquish?
[00:02:58]  Hebrews 11 says that there's this great cloud of witnesses.
[00:03:04]  Now, imagine some kind of sporting competition.
[00:03:07]  Your life is a sporting competition, and gathered around are the cloud of witnesses Abraham, Isaac, Jacob himself, who we have just heard about, who wrestled with the Lord, Rahab, the other saints.
[00:03:22]  They're gathered in the stadium to watch the contest of your life as you are more than a conqueror.
[00:03:29]  And you pause before the game begins and look at them and say, just so you know, my strategy in life is to avoid the opposition at all costs.
[00:03:42]  They think, well, this is going to be kind of boring.
[00:03:46]  I thought we came to see a contest.
[00:03:49]  Say, no, no, but what I like to do is try to stay as far away from any kind of conflict, any kind of struggle as possible.
[00:03:56]  And all of a sudden, there's like Abraham scrolling on his phone rather than paying attention to the game of your life.
[00:04:03]  Rahab's thinking about leaving and going and get some food because this is terribly boring.
[00:04:09]  It wasn't that way with Jacob when he wrestled with God.
[00:04:13]  I remember being a very small boy and having this particular story in one of those storybook Bible situations.
[00:04:20]  And of course, as a little boy, you're flipping through and then you see this story illustrated.
[00:04:25]  You're like, well, I think I'll look at that one.
[00:04:29]  And then I got done with it.
[00:04:31]  I remember thinking, I'm going to have to go check with my parents on this story.
[00:04:36]  Something is terribly wrong.
[00:04:38]  Okay, first of all, there's a man wrestling with God.
[00:04:43]  What's going on there?
[00:04:45]  And then he won.
[00:04:48]  Dad and mom, who edited this book?
[00:04:51]  I don't think that this is okay.
[00:04:54]  And yet that's what happened.
[00:04:56]  Jacob wrestled with the Lord.
[00:04:58]  Let's consider a survey of the text.
[00:05:01]  Jacob was headed back into the promised land after spending 20 years in Padan Aram.
[00:05:09]  He was very wealthy, traveling with wives, servants, 11 sons, and abundant goods.
[00:05:19]  But he was soon to face his brother Esau, who, as far as Jacob knew, still had a score to settle with him.
[00:05:27]  After sending his family over a brook for the night, Jacob was left alone and wrestled a man until daybreak.
[00:05:33]  That's verse 24 of the text.
[00:05:36]  This man was no mere man, but God himself, a truth that's revealed to us in this passage and also in Hosea chapter 12, verse 3.
[00:05:47]  There, the prophet says, He took his brother by the heel in the womb, of course, talking about Jacob, and by his strength he had power with God.
[00:05:56]  So we know that Jacob is actually wrestling with God in the text.
[00:06:01]  When this man could not prevail over Jacob, he touched his hip socket, throwing his hip out, and Jacob.
[00:06:07]  Continued to wrestle even after having his hip thrown out.
[00:06:11]  That's verse 25.
[00:06:13]  Jacob would not let the man go unless he blessed him.
[00:06:18]  That's verse 26.
[00:06:20]  The man responded by asking Jacob's name and then changing his name to Israel.
[00:06:24]  For Jacob was a prince who had wrestled with God and men and had prevailed.
[00:06:31]  Verse 28.
[00:06:33]  Jacob returned this question What's your name?
[00:06:37]  But instead of getting an answer, he got a blessing.
[00:06:40]  That's verse 29.
[00:06:42]  Jacob called the place Peniel, for his life had been preserved even while seeing God face to face.
[00:06:49]  And Jacob passed on toward the promised land.
[00:06:52]  As he did so, the sun rose on him and he walked with a limp.
[00:06:57]  Verse 31.
[00:06:58]  The children of Israel remembered this encounter by not eating the sinew of the thigh.
[00:07:03]  Verse 32.
[00:07:06]  Now, what are you supposed to make of this story?
[00:07:08]  Well, it's got a very simple truth.
[00:07:12]  If you want to be blessed, and you should want to be blessed, you have to wrestle with God.
[00:07:20]  There's simply no other way to receive blessing from the Lord.
[00:07:26]  Now, that's an intimidating prospect.
[00:07:28]  We would like to be blessed in another way, and a lot of us don't actually think about the requirement for us to walk under the blessing of God.
[00:07:36]  There's that particular problem.
[00:07:37]  We'll get to some of that.
[00:07:39]  But once you say, okay, I gather that our Father in heaven indeed does bless us.
[00:07:45]  Psalm 103 tells us to forget not all his benefits.
[00:07:48]  We're actually to remember these benefits, these blessings that he's given us, and we're to walk in those blessings and say, How am I going to get it?
[00:07:56]  The only way you're going to get it is to wrestle with God.
[00:08:01]  Jacob had to do that.
[00:08:02]  He did that, and he was remarkably blessed.
[00:08:07]  So, what I want to do is unfold this text with four different headings.
[00:08:12]  We walked a survey of the text.
[00:08:13]  Now, let's consider different themes, different headings of the text.
[00:08:17]  The first is this we need to know who we must wrestle with.
[00:08:22]  Who we must wrestle with.
[00:08:24]  Now, this is the kind of text that can get all jumbled up when you're doing your Bible study.
[00:08:29]  You know, there's certain texts that are just safer when you're doing Bible study.
[00:08:33]  You're in a Bible study, and the text is do not steal.
[00:08:38]  You're gathered around your evangelical Bible study, everybody's got their coffee, and you're in a pretty safe spot.
[00:08:47]  You know, the leader doesn't look around and go, I mean, what in the world could this text mean?
[00:08:53]  What does it mean to you?
[00:08:54]  Well, I think it means do not steal, is what I think it means.
[00:09:00]  But then all of a sudden, you turn to this text, you turn to Genesis 32, and Jacob's wrestling with God, and it can get wild in that Bible study.
[00:09:10]  You can find all sorts of things that people say they're wrestling with rather than simply wrestling with God.
[00:09:20]  Why do we avoid wrestling with God?
[00:09:23]  Well, it's an intimidating prospect if we're honest with ourselves.
[00:09:27]  This was a painful episode for Jacob.
[00:09:30]  And it can be a painful episode, and it is a painful episode to wrestle with the Lord.
[00:09:35]  So we want to wrestle with anything but God.
[00:09:39]  Think of some of the ways that we avoid wrestling with God, we wrestle with other things.
[00:09:42]  So people go to therapy to wrestle with their emotions.
[00:09:48]  I'm really wrestling with my anxiety, I'm really wrestling with my depression.
[00:09:53]  And one of the things you need to know is that you need to stop that.
[00:10:00]  Don't wrestle with your anxiety.
[00:10:02]  Don't wrestle with your depression.
[00:10:04]  You wrestle with the Lord.
[00:10:07]  You kill depression.
[00:10:08]  You kill anxiety.
[00:10:10]  You kill those kinds of things.
[00:10:12]  But you don't focus on them and begin to wrestle with them.
[00:10:16]  You actually have to wrestle with God.
[00:10:20]  There's ivory tower theologians that talk about wrestling with the tensions in the text.
[00:10:27]  I'm really wrestling with the text.
[00:10:30]  And I understand that there are complicated things that are in the Bible, you know.
[00:10:33]  We're told that about the Apostle Paul himself, that he writes some things that are hard.
[00:10:37]  So that's all right.
[00:10:38]  But what you realize is people start to wrestle abstractly with all of the different ideas in the text rather than just looking at the Bible and saying, This is what it says, and I'm actually going to obey it.
[00:10:49]  I'm actually going to put it into practice.
[00:10:51]  We'd rather wrestle with the various ideas.
[00:10:55]  We definitely like to wrestle with other people on the internet.
[00:11:04]  They're such easier targets than God.
[00:11:08]  What's my options?
[00:11:09]  Wrestle with God or wrestle with some guy on the internet?
[00:11:12]  And I know more than he does.
[00:11:14]  I'll take the guy on the internet.
[00:11:17]  Now, there are conflicts and have been in the body of Christ for a very long time, and we're supposed to address those by all means.
[00:11:24]  But we say, boy, I'd rather find some Arminian or some dispensationalist or somebody to wrestle with rather than actually looking to Yahweh face to face and dealing with him.
[00:11:37]  And dealing with my life as Jacob did.
[00:11:42]  Men wrestle with bitterness.
[00:11:43]  They wrestle with disappointments about their lives.
[00:11:46]  Why aren't their lives different?
[00:11:48]  They look to other people's lives and they see the kind of success that they've had, see the blessings that they've enjoyed.
[00:11:54]  And rather than saying, okay, I'm going to emulate this, I'm going to stay in the saddle, I'm going to work hard, pray hard, trust the Lord, follow people as they follow the Lord Jesus Christ, they get all turned in on themselves and they start to wrestle with their own bitterness, their own failures, some kind of self loathing.
[00:12:16]  You say, well, I'm just a guy that likes to review the game film.
[00:12:19]  I'm serious about my.
[00:12:21]  Personal holiness.
[00:12:22]  So I would say, well, praise the Lord for reviewing the game film.
[00:12:25]  There's nothing wrong with reviewing the game film.
[00:12:27]  That's what you do when you confess your sin.
[00:12:29]  So you look at the last week and you figure out where it is that you missed the mark, and then you confess that and you stand up from it, you receive the assurance of pardon, you move on.
[00:12:37]  But you have to be honest with yourself.
[00:12:39]  There's a difference between doing that and just spinning your wheels because you are wrestling with yourself, your past decisions, rather than simply getting up and Moving on.
[00:12:52]  If you've made bad decisions in the past, well, that's no reason to keep making bad decisions now.
[00:12:58]  You have to face up to the Lord.
[00:13:02]  Wives, it's far easier to wrestle with your husband than it is to wrestle with God.
[00:13:10]  And so wives fall into this trap.
[00:13:13]  Whatever it is that's out there in front of us, whatever decision that it is that needs to be made, rather than taking it to the Lord, asking the Lord to bless it, wives begin to Wrestle with their husbands, and husbands know this, they don't like this.
[00:13:30]  They begin to wrestle with their wives rather than wrestling with the Lord.
[00:13:33]  We got husband and wife wrestling rather than both of them wrestling with the Lord.
[00:13:36]  This doesn't mean that you're not supposed to talk about decisions, you're not supposed to have honest disagreements and work these things out when decisions are made.
[00:13:43]  By all means, you need to communicate about these kinds of things, but you need to do it in faith, looking to the Lord, trusting the Lord.
[00:13:51]  We hear in 1 Peter about the holy women of old, like Sarah.
[00:13:57]  Who put their hope in God and didn't fear what was frightening?
[00:14:02]  I tell several of the ladies at New St. Andrews College, and people are getting to the end of their college and they're thinking about marriage, some of them getting engaged and going through marriage counseling.
[00:14:15]  You should be able to look at these young ladies and tell them it's an absolutely terrifying thing to get married when you're a Christian woman.
[00:14:23]  You know, the Bible says I'm supposed to submit to Him in all things, and yes, I know if He tells me sin, I'm not supposed to do it.
[00:14:29]  But really, I'm going to have this head.
[00:14:31]  I'm going to be made a body.
[00:14:33]  I'm to submit to him.
[00:14:33]  And then you're looking at him and you're thinking, well, you know, my dad, for maybe all the disagreements I've had over the years with my dad, he's probably in his 50s, late 40s, something like that.
[00:14:48]  He's seeming a lot wiser than this guy who's 22.
[00:14:51]  So I'm about to have a shift.
[00:14:55]  Mm hmm, you are.
[00:14:58]  And how did the women of old.
[00:15:00]  Deal with that?
[00:15:01]  How did they face up to things that were frightening?
[00:15:03]  Well, they put their hope in God.
[00:15:05]  And that is to say, they wrestled with God.
[00:15:06]  They dealt with the Lord regarding his promises.
[00:15:09]  We see this kind of thing with Abigail.
[00:15:12]  How could Abigail act so appropriately when her husband was acting like a fool and she absolutely did the right thing?
[00:15:23]  She didn't ask his permission when he was acting like a fool and he was about to be killed by King David, she intervened in just the right way.
[00:15:33]  But how did she have this courage to go face this king who was dead set on going to execute her foolish husband?
[00:15:41]  Well, she was holding on to the promises of God.
[00:15:44]  She was actually wrestling with the Lord.
[00:15:45]  She was dealing with the Lord, not just there shaking Nabal.
[00:15:48]  I mean, think about how it could have gone if she would have decided not to wrestle with the Lord, but rather to wrestle with her husband.
[00:15:54]  Nabal, why have you been such a fool?
[00:15:55]  Nabal, don't you know what's going to happen?
[00:15:57]  Nabal, David is coming to get you.
[00:15:58]  Nabal, I can't believe you've done this.
[00:16:00]  Nabal, this is what you need to do.
[00:16:01]  Nabal, go do this kind of thing.
[00:16:06]  The other thing, not truly wrestling with the Lord, would be to just curl up in the corner and bite her fingernails.
[00:16:17]  Well, I want to be a godly wife, so I won't say anything to my husband.
[00:16:21]  There's no thing I'm not supposed to.
[00:16:25]  So I'll just be afraid.
[00:16:26]  And I'll just let the bad things that I see coming happen.
[00:16:31]  She didn't do that either.
[00:16:33]  She went to David.
[00:16:36]  She sent those envoys before him.
[00:16:39]  She fell down on the ground.
[00:16:41]  She took responsibility while signaling that he is a fool.
[00:16:45]  She made very clear whose fault it really was, and yet she.
[00:16:49]  Took responsibility when her husband was acting a fool.
[00:16:53]  And then she reminded David of the promises of God.
[00:16:59]  She was wrestling with the Lord in such a way that when David had forgotten the promises and was soon to bring blood guilt upon himself, she actually remembered those promises and presented them to David, diverting him away from making a foolish decision.
[00:17:12]  That's a woman who's wrestling with the Lord.
[00:17:14]  She's actually there plowing the field, doing the work, trusting the Lord, wrestling with the Lord, and putting these things together.

=== Accountability In Faith (13:48) ===

[00:17:23]  Into practice.
[00:17:26]  We talk about victims who wrestle with systems rather than wrestling with the Lord.
[00:17:35]  And of course, there's the social justice movement, there's Black Lives Matter, there's LGBTQ victimhood, all the victims of intersectionality that certainly were a massive problem and certainly are still a massive problem in our society.
[00:17:51]  But I imagine here in the heart of Texas, you're all conservatives and you pretty much can see.
[00:17:58]  The victim status, the victim card when you see one.
[00:18:02]  You can identify that kind of thing.
[00:18:04]  But turn it on yourself and acknowledge that that kind of thing that is so flagrant in our culture now is something that we can easily do.
[00:18:12]  We're in systems, we're in organizations and institutions.
[00:18:16]  And when we find that we're not getting everything that we think we ought to get, do we complain?
[00:18:26]  Do we act like victims?
[00:18:29]  Do we pout about it?
[00:18:32]  Do we point to all of the reasons that we're not experiencing the blessing that we ought to be experiencing because of the people who've gone before us who didn't walk in enough faithfulness that faithfulness would have cascaded down to us had I had better people, better fathers, better grandfathers?
[00:18:49]  Do we find ourselves making the exact same complaints?
[00:18:54]  You know what that's doing?
[00:18:55]  We're wrestling with the system, wrestling with the way things are rather than actually wrestling with God.
[00:19:02]  How's the blessing going to come to us?
[00:19:04]  The blessing is going to come to us when we wrestle with God.
[00:19:07]  But we're expending all of this other energy wrestling with other things rather than actually wrestling with the Lord.
[00:19:16]  Young men, particularly, those of you who are starting to count the cost and thinking about venturing out on your own, here's the simple truth of the way it works you have to hustle and you have to wrestle with the Lord.
[00:19:32]  Okay?
[00:19:34]  There's planting and there's watering, but who brings the growth?
[00:19:39]  God does.
[00:19:40]  And if you've worked a little bit and you're concerned that there hasn't been enough growth, who are you supposed to talk to about that?
[00:19:49]  You say, well, my dad, my boss, the market, my politician.
[00:19:57]  At the end of the day, who's in charge?
[00:19:59]  God is.
[00:20:00]  At the end of the day, who made Goshen a place of blessing amid the plagues of Egypt?
[00:20:06]  God did.
[00:20:08]  And where you see another person blessed, you thank God for it.
[00:20:12]  And where you are lacking that blessing, you're not seeing the fruit, you have to deal with the Lord.
[00:20:19]  At the end of the day, why are things the way that they are?
[00:20:21]  The answer is God.
[00:20:23]  We see this hesitation to actually deal with the Lord in C.S. Lewis's silver chair.
[00:20:29]  This moment when Jill sees this lovely stream and she's dying of thirst, and she would go drink from this stream, but there's just one problem the lion, Aslan's in the way.
[00:20:43]  This is how Lewis recounts that particular episode.
[00:20:47]  The lion says, Are you not thirsty?
[00:20:50]  I'm dying of thirst, said Jill.
[00:20:52]  Then drink, said the lion.
[00:20:55]  May I?
[00:20:56]  Could I?
[00:20:57]  Would you mind going away while I do? said Jill.
[00:21:01]  The lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl.
[00:21:05]  The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
[00:21:10]  I dare not come and drink, said Jill.
[00:21:13]  Then you will die of thirst, said the lion.
[00:21:16]  Oh dear, said Jill, coming another step nearer.
[00:21:19]  I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.
[00:21:23]  There is no other stream, said the lion.
[00:21:27]  There is absolutely no other stream of blessing and life other than God Himself in His Son Jesus Christ.
[00:21:37]  You must come to Him.
[00:21:39]  You must come to Him.
[00:21:40]  That first time you came to Him, you remember that terrifying moment where you realized that you're a sinner, a wretched sinner, and that you deserve hell?
[00:21:50]  That's exactly what's coming.
[00:21:51]  And the only way you would be saved would be coming to the one whose wrath will burn in hell, coming to the one whom you've sinned against, fessing up to your very creator who made you upright before we burned it all down in our father Adam.
[00:22:08]  That terrifying moment and that freeing and liberating moment when you came to Aslan, when you came to the lion himself and you found forgiveness and mercy and grace and blessing and favor.
[00:22:23]  Now, having begun by the Spirit, would you be perfected by the flesh?
[00:22:27]  Having begun by the Spirit, would you be perfected by politicians, by people with power?
[00:22:34]  No, you're perfected in the exact same way you began.
[00:22:38]  You will experience blessing as you actually deal with that God, the one to whom you first came and received justification and received regeneration, received the power of the Spirit.
[00:22:51]  You must deal with him.
[00:22:53]  Interestingly, the Christian who wrestles with God is the one who's not always tied up in knots.
[00:23:00]  You ever met the person who's just always frantic?
[00:23:02]  It's just always something.
[00:23:03]  They're like a tangled up electrical cord.
[00:23:08]  And it's always in the wrong place.
[00:23:10]  It's been like stuck in the linen closet.
[00:23:12]  I have seven kids.
[00:23:13]  Like, what's a tangled up electrical cord doing in a linen closet?
[00:23:17]  That's what this person's inner life is like.
[00:23:20]  You say, why is she like that?
[00:23:22]  Why is he like that?
[00:23:23]  Because he's not actually wrestling with God.
[00:23:24]  It's the one who wrestles with God.
[00:23:26]  That has genuine peace.
[00:23:29]  So, who must we wrestle with?
[00:23:30]  That's the first heading.
[00:23:31]  The answer is God.
[00:23:32]  Second heading, where must we wrestle?
[00:23:37]  With God.
[00:23:38]  If the first maneuver is to avoid wrestling with God by wrestling with other things, then the second way to escape truly wrestling with God is to pretend to wrestle with Him.
[00:23:52]  But this was no abstract wrestling match for Jacob.
[00:23:55]  This was not fisticuffs in the cloud.
[00:23:58]  Everything seems to be in the cloud, and so we just decide that that's how we're going to live our Christianity.
[00:24:03]  We'll live our Christianity in the cloud, we'll wrestle with the Lord in the cloud.
[00:24:08]  This was not a simulated boxing match.
[00:24:11]  It was not a video game.
[00:24:14]  Real wrestling is wonderfully tangible.
[00:24:17]  It has a marvelous way of focusing the mind.
[00:24:21]  Imagine having Jacob here with us, and we could say, What was it like to wrestle with God, Jacob?
[00:24:26]  And I imagine he'd say something like, You know, I don't really remember.
[00:24:29]  I was just working so hard not to get choked out.
[00:24:33]  That's what it was about.
[00:24:36]  One of the reasons Christians get so whizzed up about all of the wrong things is because they have way too much energy.
[00:24:41]  They wouldn't have all of that energy if they were actually wrestling with the Lord.
[00:24:45]  You know, the situations I'm talking about.
[00:24:47]  I say, Did you see what she posted on Facebook?
[00:24:51]  Did you see?
[00:24:52]  I can't believe that she posted that on Facebook.
[00:24:54]  I'm going to send that to my sister on the text message stream.
[00:24:57]  That's going on the family message chat.
[00:24:58]  Can you believe that she did this?
[00:25:00]  I know why she did this.
[00:25:01]  Do you want me to tell you why she did this?
[00:25:03]  I know why.
[00:25:05]  I say, Why in the world do you have so much energy?
[00:25:09]  If you're wrestling with the Lord, You know, and then you'd say, Hey, you know, why don't I tell you what?
[00:25:16]  Let's go talk to her about it.
[00:25:20]  Well, you know, I'm going to pray about it.
[00:25:21]  I'm going to think about that.
[00:25:23]  I'll pray.
[00:25:24]  I'll wrestle with the Lord in the cloud about it.
[00:25:27]  Ask him to do it.
[00:25:28]  Well, why don't you wrestle with the Lord like right here on the ground?
[00:25:30]  Let's go talk to her and see what the Lord will do.
[00:25:33]  He might do something.
[00:25:35]  Somebody might actually get a hit put out of place, and we could get some advancement of the kingdom of God if we deal with this matter.
[00:25:41]  The Lord's down here with us, right?
[00:25:43]  Never leave us or forsake us.
[00:25:44]  We don't just have to escape purely to the prayer closet and ask the Lord to do something about it.
[00:25:52]  How do you know if you are LARPing rather than actually wrestling with the Lord?
[00:25:59]  Let me give you some examples.
[00:26:00]  Parents claim to wrestle with the Lord over their children, but if they are not sacrificing for the welfare of those children, then they are not really wrestling with God.
[00:26:13]  So, if you pray, Lord, bless my children to a thousand generations, bless them, make your face shine upon them, Lord, may they do greater works than we have done, you start to get that generational blessing going.
[00:26:25]  But if you're not tangibly sacrificing for them, if you're not paying close attention to them and their shortcomings and their lack of virtue and their virtuous deeds, if you're not actually there at the plow working it, then you're just LARPing.
[00:26:42]  It's not real work.
[00:26:46]  This means sacrificing for their education, means money, resources, means sacrificing so that they would find healthy spouses, blessed spouses, means sacrificing by having people in your home and demonstrating to them the practical virtues of how to greet people and welcome people and how to cook meals, that routine patience of actually seeing that the jobs that they're given in the home are actually executed,
[00:27:15]  and when they're not executed, how to patiently and kindly tee it back up again and give it another shot.
[00:27:20]  If you're not in the grind actually doing those things, then it's LARPing.
[00:27:25]  My father was a general contractor in Florida, worked on homes in Florida, swinging a hammer.
[00:27:32]  And from third grade to 10th grade, he would take me out every summer to work with him and to sweat with him.
[00:27:39]  And I hated it and I didn't want to go.
[00:27:42]  And I'm sure I put up such a fight that if you were to see a videotape of me, I'd be embarrassed by not wanting to do this particular activity.
[00:27:49]  And yet he put up with my stubbornness and said, No, here we go.
[00:27:52]  Let's go do it again.
[00:27:55]  How to work hard.
[00:27:55]  I learned a work ethic.
[00:27:57]  He didn't just pray, Lord, give him a work ethic.
[00:27:59]  He actually dealt with all of the setbacks that I caused, all of those difficulties, in order to establish this kind of work ethic in me.
[00:28:07]  That's the way we have to do it as parents.
[00:28:09]  That's actually wrestling with the Lord.
[00:28:12]  Another example young men pretend to wrestle with the Lord over their pornography, but it's all LARPing if they don't have the kind of accountability that really hurts.
[00:28:23]  So, you as a Teenage, old teenage guy meeting with three other teenage guys at a coffee shop to talk about how you all failed again this last week is not accountability.
[00:28:37]  It's you drowning together.
[00:28:40]  You have to have real accountability.
[00:28:42]  You tell a father who can actually do something in your life, you tell elders and have accountability from elders and pastors who actually have authority to make your life remarkably uncomfortable if you continue in that particular lazy, self centered sin.
[00:29:00]  Young ladies pretend to wrestle with the Lord over obtaining a godly husband, but if they're not taking the practical measures to become a lovely woman, one who a godly man would want to marry, then they're really LARPing.
[00:29:12]  They're complaining.
[00:29:14]  Oh, there's so few men out there today, aren't there?
[00:29:17]  Well, yes, there are.
[00:29:18]  There are just so few.
[00:29:20]  These men have become such scoundrels.
[00:29:22]  It wasn't like this back in the day.
[00:29:25]  Where's the next 1950s meme that I can look at?
[00:29:32]  Now, here's the problem with all of these things.
[00:29:36]  Is it a tough landscape out there, ladies?
[00:29:38]  Absolutely it is.
[00:29:40]  Okay?
[00:29:41]  So I grant you that.
[00:29:43]  But what are we going to do about it, right?
[00:29:45]  Let's just face up.
[00:29:45]  Like, what do you want your young ladies to do?
[00:29:48]  Well, that means you really need to go after it.
[00:29:50]  You need to go for the gold.
[00:29:51]  Okay?
[00:29:52]  Look at Proverbs 31.
[00:29:54]  Study that lady carefully and be the best Proverbs 31 lady you can be.
[00:29:58]  And we're going to pray.
[00:30:00]  God's going to provide.
[00:30:01]  We're not going to give in to anxiety.
[00:30:02]  We're going to trust the Lord.
[00:30:03]  I'm going to intercede for you as a father.
[00:30:06]  Coming along, but the last thing we're going to do is complain.
[00:30:10]  The last thing we're going to do is give it to some kind of lazy unbelief that's going to result in no blessing coming upon us.
[00:30:17]  We have to wrestle with the Lord about these things.
[00:30:22]  Disgruntled conversations about the present state of things, about the downfall of our nation.
[00:30:28]  This is a hallmark.
[00:30:30]  This is a hallmark.
[00:30:32]  All right, so I could touch a nerve here, probably.
[00:30:35]  The Richmond North of Richmond song.
[00:30:39]  Now, I'm from Florida.
[00:30:40]  Central Florida, real Florida.
[00:30:42]  It's basically Texas, Florida.
[00:30:44]  It's identical.
[00:30:45]  Oaks, brushes, cattle, rattlesnakes, okay?
[00:30:50]  So, yes, I tapped my foot to that song.
[00:30:52]  I liked that song.
[00:30:55]  But let's face it stop complaining.
[00:30:59]  Stop complaining.
[00:31:02]  Just stop it.
[00:31:04]  Man up, do your work, stop doing drugs or whatever it is that was going on.

=== Disciplined By Love (16:01) ===

[00:31:12]  Provide for your family, trust the Lord, be a man, have courage, do your job.
[00:31:20]  You serve the living God.
[00:31:22]  The living God is the one who dispenses these blessings.
[00:31:26]  So stop complaining.
[00:31:27]  We are in a time where the conservatives in our nation can't help but watch another round of Fox News, though they've probably given up on that.
[00:31:35]  So now they're watching another round of Tucker on X, or now they're watching the Daily Wire as young people, and they get done and they wring their hands and they're grumpy until dinner, until bed, then they go to sleep and they wake up the next morning and they do it all again and they have no idea why they're so tied up in knots.
[00:31:53]  It's because you're not actually living it.
[00:31:56]  If you raise your family in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, if you're pouring in sacrificially to some form of their education, if you are spending yourselves and being spent for the gospel of Jesus Christ, then you're set right and you're joyful and you can sing, you can rejoice, you can be glad, and you can be thankful.
[00:32:15]  And that will set you apart from the grumpy, disgruntled conservatives of our land who are simply saying, Get off my lawn.
[00:32:24]  Now, is it bad?
[00:32:25]  Yes, it's bad.
[00:32:27]  But that's right where we need the church of God to actually wrestle with the Lord practically, tangibly, and not just watch whatever comes next in the news and then say, we're going to go and pray about it.
[00:32:40]  You actually have to engage in the real world.
[00:32:45]  So, a little assessment to examine whether you are LARPing with the Lord or are you wrestling with the Lord?
[00:32:53]  That's the question.
[00:32:54]  And every one of you need to set this before your life and say, okay, let me do a little self examination.
[00:32:59]  Am I LARPing with the Lord?
[00:33:01]  Or am I actually wrestling with the Lord?
[00:33:03]  And this can be a tricky question to ask.
[00:33:06]  It's even a bit dangerous, but it's necessary nonetheless.
[00:33:09]  Here's what I want to tell you reading the Bible is essential.
[00:33:13]  If you're not reading the Bible, then you're not wrestling with the Lord.
[00:33:16]  That much is clear.
[00:33:18]  Praying is essential.
[00:33:19]  If you're not praying, then you are not actually wrestling with the Lord.
[00:33:23]  That is essential.
[00:33:24]  But here's the catch you can be reading your Bible and praying and still not wrestling with the Lord.
[00:33:30]  The Pharisees did that, they searched the Bible continually.
[00:33:34]  But they weren't wrestling with the Lord.
[00:33:36]  They prayed all the time, but they weren't wrestling with the Lord.
[00:33:39]  How do you know if you're really wrestling with the Lord?
[00:33:41]  Here's a simple test Do you walk with a limp?
[00:33:47]  Do you walk with the limp of obedience?
[00:33:50]  Jacob walked with a limp.
[00:33:51]  Jacob knew he wrestled with the Lord.
[00:33:53]  That's why he was hobbling.
[00:33:56]  Can you look at your life and say, I sacrificed there to obey the Lord and it was costly?
[00:34:01]  I sacrificed there to obey the Lord and it was costly.
[00:34:05]  I remember what it cost me.
[00:34:06]  Might have cost me relationships, might have cost me money, might have cost me my reputation, might have cost me my time.
[00:34:13]  It certainly costs me my time.
[00:34:15]  It costs me my vacation.
[00:34:20]  Let me tally up the costs.
[00:34:22]  Okay.
[00:34:22]  Now, this doesn't mean that we go and do this like radical, you know, you don't take a sermon like this and say, Oh, I'll show you a cost.
[00:34:32]  I'll go empty up my bank account.
[00:34:34]  No, don't do something like that.
[00:34:36]  But routine.
[00:34:38]  Sacrifices for the Lord and for the welfare of your people, actually making those sacrifices and then walking with that limp.
[00:34:49]  A third heading we've considered who we're wrestling with God, where we're wrestling with the Lord, right here on the ground, not up in the cloud.
[00:34:58]  Third, just how tough is this wrestling?
[00:35:01]  That's the third heading.
[00:35:03]  First, I said earlier that Jacob was trying to not get choked out, and someone's going to think, now, now, God would not really choke Jacob out.
[00:35:13]  And to that I say, oh, yes, he would.
[00:35:17]  Oh, yes, he would.
[00:35:18]  You have to get this understanding quickly.
[00:35:22]  God plays hardball with his people.
[00:35:25]  This is the God who looked at the meekest man who's ever walked the earth, Moses, faithful Moses.
[00:35:31]  And he said something like this to Moses Yes, Moses, I love you.
[00:35:35]  Yes, Moses, you have served me faithfully in many ways.
[00:35:38]  And no, you may not go into the promised land because you did not uphold me as holy when you struck the rock.
[00:35:44]  No.
[00:35:46]  The no was hard, the no was clear.
[00:35:48]  The no hurt.
[00:35:50]  The no was not something that Moses wanted.
[00:35:56]  This is the God who looked at the man who was a faithful man, a man after his own heart, David, and he said, Yes, I love you.
[00:36:05]  Yes, you are king of Israel.
[00:36:07]  Yes, people will be singing your psalms till the Lord Jesus Christ comes in the end.
[00:36:15]  But the sword's not going to depart your house.
[00:36:17]  And what you have done privately, I'm going to do to you in the sight of all Israel's.
[00:36:22]  Absalom, your son.
[00:36:23]  Is going to sleep with all of your wives' concubines.
[00:36:29]  The child's going to die.
[00:36:33]  God certainly wouldn't kill a child.
[00:36:38]  It's exactly what he did.
[00:36:40]  It's exactly what he did.
[00:36:42]  Oh, then he must only do that to pagans.
[00:36:46]  Nope.
[00:36:49]  This God disciplines those whom he loves.
[00:36:53]  The hip socket was minor.
[00:36:56]  Compared to what happened to Moses, what happened to David, God will judge his people.
[00:37:05]  Take this to heart when you consider the sins that you're dabbling around with, secret sins that you're allowing, or some kind of LARPing.
[00:37:14]  This is the thing, this is the kindness of God.
[00:37:16]  God doesn't let us go on wrestling those other things, He makes us wrestle Him.
[00:37:22]  As Len says, there's no other stream, and you're going to come.
[00:37:28]  He loves us enough to do that.
[00:37:30]  And when we start LARPing, he's like, I'm not going to let him LARP.
[00:37:33]  And if you say, No, no, I'm going to keep LARPing, he won't let you.
[00:37:37]  I'm telling you, you better wrestle him now.
[00:37:38]  Turn and face him now.
[00:37:40]  You don't want him to turn.
[00:37:41]  He's going to turn you.
[00:37:44]  The longer you LARP with him, the longer you don't get those feet down to pavement, he is going to put them down to pavement with authority because he loves you.
[00:37:56]  How difficult is this wrestling?
[00:37:59]  Just because you have worshiped the Lord and set up remembrance of his promises, that doesn't mean that the wrestling is all behind you.
[00:38:06]  Some people would say that this wrestling is a conversion moment.
[00:38:09]  That would be just like kind of American Christianity to think that this is a conversion moment for Jacob, but it's manifestly not a conversion moment.
[00:38:17]  20 years earlier, Jacob was in the promised land before he went to Padanaram.
[00:38:24]  You remember Jacob's ladder?
[00:38:26]  His glorious dream, angels descending and ascending on the ladder.
[00:38:30]  This is the very house of God.
[00:38:32]  Jacob is remembering all of that.
[00:38:34]  He actually was sleeping on a stone and he takes that stone and he pours oil on the stone as a remembrance of this glorious meeting with God.
[00:38:43]  And it's 20 years later, Jacob is alone and God comes on him in the night to assault him.
[00:38:52]  I think of like our evangelical youth culture.
[00:38:56]  You're at some kind of youth retreat, you have this mountaintop experience with the Lord, you're around the campfire.
[00:39:02]  And you set up your own Ebenezer, your own pillar to the Lord.
[00:39:06]  And then you come to find out that 40 years later, you're 60 and God's still wrestling with you and putting your hip out of socket.
[00:39:13]  Like, but Lord, I poured oil on a rock 20 years ago.
[00:39:19]  Aren't we past all of these moments?
[00:39:21]  Haven't we had a moment together, Lord?
[00:39:24]  And God says, Oh, yeah, we're going to have another one right now.
[00:39:29]  I'm going to sanctify this bride.
[00:39:31]  I'm going to keep working on this bride.
[00:39:35]  God appears to carry on this wrestling with his children.
[00:39:38]  So we can actually determine how old Jacob is when he's wrestling with the Lord.
[00:39:42]  The text doesn't tell us.
[00:39:44]  Actual Genesis 32, but we can triangulate his actual age by considering various texts.
[00:39:52]  I won't take you to all the texts, but you basically can average this out and you discover that he went to Padan Aram to serve Laban when he was 77.
[00:40:04]  He stayed 20 years.
[00:40:06]  He's 97 years old when he wrestles with the Lord.
[00:40:12]  You say, no wonder his hip went out.
[00:40:18]  97?
[00:40:21]  If you're at like middle age, you think, all right, now I'm in the grind, I'm wrestling with the Lord.
[00:40:25]  But really, am I going to be wrestling with the Lord in that same way over these same kind of sins and problems and issues, weeds growing in the garden for my children and for my grandchildren?
[00:40:36]  You mean I'm going to stay in the saddle that long?
[00:40:38]  Absolutely.
[00:40:40]  And this is an encouragement to us.
[00:40:45]  Think of the fact that many of you are still wrestling with various sins, pride.
[00:40:52]  Lust, greed, bitterness, envy, anxiety, depression, whatever it is.
[00:41:03]  If you're still wrestling with that late in your life, remember that God loves you.
[00:41:10]  That's why you're wrestling with Him over that particular sin.
[00:41:14]  That's why He's dealing with you.
[00:41:15]  That's why you're here worshiping the Lord as His people, confessing those sins, receiving the assurance of pardon.
[00:41:22]  And the encouragement is this is exactly what it means to be a Christian.
[00:41:27]  Don't get into that place where you think, oh, because I'm still dealing with things.
[00:41:32]  Obviously, I must not be the real deal.
[00:41:34]  No, you're still dealing with them, and that's exactly what God does.
[00:41:38]  You are His people, He loves you.
[00:41:40]  That's why things are this way.
[00:41:43]  And so give thanks for that.
[00:41:45]  Trust Him.
[00:41:46]  Rejoice that He's still dealing with you, and you are still dealing with Him.
[00:41:54]  I mentioned earlier that those who wrestle with God are the ones that are quite calm, they're actually not all tied up in knots.
[00:42:01]  And the same kind of thing is true here.
[00:42:03]  Those who wrestle long with God over the years, they're actually the ones with more energy, not less.
[00:42:11]  Have you recognized that?
[00:42:13]  You wrestle with yourself, you wrestle with all of these other things rather than wrestling with the Lord.
[00:42:17]  You get tied up in knots and you get exhausted.
[00:42:20]  But the man, the woman who wrestles with God, he or she straightened out and he or she finds that their youth is renewed like the eagles, still pressing on.
[00:42:30]  I mean, aches and pains, walking with a limp, but there's joy.
[00:42:34]  There's gladness.
[00:42:35]  There's a twinkle in the eye.
[00:42:36]  There's a song on the lips and in the heart.
[00:42:40]  Why?
[00:42:41]  Because I'm dealing with the Lord.
[00:42:43]  It's actually a refreshing experience.
[00:42:46]  The sun rose on Jacob, the text says.
[00:42:50]  And so the sun rises upon those who wrestle with the Lord.
[00:42:55]  Fourth and final point what are we wrestling for?
[00:42:58]  We've seen who we're wrestling with, where we're wrestling, how difficult this wrestling match can be, but we have to remember what we're actually wrestling for.
[00:43:07]  Take special notice of the context.
[00:43:09]  Jacob is heading back into the promised land, and he's doing so at God's word.
[00:43:16]  God is the one who 20 years ago told him, I'm going to give you this land, Jacob.
[00:43:21]  It was a covenant promise that God made to him.
[00:43:26]  God is the one who told Jacob to leave Padan Aram and go back to the promised land.
[00:43:32]  God said it.
[00:43:34]  What is he wrestling for?
[00:43:35]  He's wrestling for the fruition of God's covenant blessings that God himself has vouchsafed to Jacob.
[00:43:44]  By the blood of Jesus Christ.
[00:43:47]  Think about this for a moment.
[00:43:48]  God has made blessings to you, promises to you, covenant blessings, benefits that are sworn to you by the blood of Jesus Christ.
[00:43:56]  This is exactly how he operated in the Old Testament with Moses in the book of Deuteronomy.
[00:44:00]  The covenant people were assembled and God set before them blessings and curses.
[00:44:04]  If you trust me, if you walk in covenant renewal with me, if you take me at my word and you obey me and you wrestle with me, then all of these blessings are going to come.
[00:44:12]  Your wives are going to have children, your flocks are going to increase.
[00:44:16]  Plague and pestilence will not come upon you.
[00:44:19]  And if you don't walk in covenant renewal with me, and you turn your back on me, and you don't gather and worship me, you don't trust me and take me at my word, then all of these curses are going to come upon you.
[00:44:28]  The exact opposite.
[00:44:30]  These things are going to happen to you.
[00:44:32]  Well, nothing has changed in that regard.
[00:44:34]  Here we are as God's covenant people gathered together to worship Him, and He's setting before us those same blessings that are received by faith, that manifest themselves by faith.
[00:44:44]  What are you actually laboring for?
[00:44:46]  You're laboring for the blessing.
[00:44:49]  You're laboring for the fruition of God's promises.
[00:44:52]  For those of you who are here at the conference, Chris Wiley said this very thing.
[00:44:56]  There's two ways that mothers say that they're going to pray for their children who might be in a little bit of trouble.
[00:45:01]  The first is to manipulate them and passive aggressively say, I'm praying for you.
[00:45:07]  The other way is to actually look at the blessings that God has promised and be praying for the manifestation of those blessings in their lives.
[00:45:16]  So you're praying for the child in a way that the child would actually want.
[00:45:20]  I want to see you walking in strength and godliness and blessing in the fruition of his promises.
[00:45:25]  That's exactly what Jacob's doing.
[00:45:27]  He's wrestling with the Lord as he's entering into the promised land that God himself has promised to him.
[00:45:36]  So you must grasp these blessings.
[00:45:39]  Psalm 128 says The man who fears the Lord, his wife shall be as a fruitful vine, and his children like olive plants around his table.
[00:45:50]  And you say, Father, I want to see those.
[00:45:53]  I long to see those blessings.
[00:45:55]  And if people begin to stray, if any of the covenant people begin to stray, what do we do?
[00:46:00]  Well, we go and wrestle with the Lord about it, saying, God, you've made promises, and we're asking that you would bring him back.
[00:46:06]  You might have a prodigal son situation.
[00:46:08]  Father, you've made promises, and we're actually wrestling with you about the manifestation of those promises.
[00:46:16]  We want to see them come to pass.
[00:46:18]  You've made promises about your kingdom, and we thank you for what we are seeing.
[00:46:23]  Glorious work that is in our midst, and we're asking for you to manifest it even more.
[00:46:28]  We're asking for more to be gathered in to this particular flock.
[00:46:32]  We're asking you to sanctify us as your people.
[00:46:35]  We want to see your glorious promises come to pass.
[00:46:41]  And where is our security as we wrestle with Him for those promises?
[00:46:44]  It is in the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:46:47]  Every single promise is yes and amen in Him.
[00:46:52]  Our faith is faith in all that God has promised us.
[00:46:55]  And it is all yes and amen in the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:46:59]  He is the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, just like the joy that was set before Jacob as he was entering into the promised land, the joy that was set before Christ, for that joy he endured the cross.

=== Security In Christ (00:47) ===

[00:47:14]  He wrestled with the Lord.
[00:47:16]  We will wrestle with the Lord in the same way as we look to that glorious Savior, Jesus Christ.
[00:47:22]  Let's pray.
[00:47:23]  Father, we thank you for your word to us.
[00:47:26]  We thank you for your covenant promises.
[00:47:28]  We thank you that you call us.
[00:47:31]  To deal with you, to actually enter into the ring and to wrestle with you face to face.
[00:47:36]  We thank you for the privilege of doing so.
[00:47:38]  We confess that very often we are distracted.
[00:47:41]  We turn away from dealing with you and decide to deal with all sorts of other things.
[00:47:45]  Forgive us for those things and help us to see the joy and the blessing and the glory of dealing with you as Jacob did.
[00:47:53]  Please help us to hold fast to you, be able to say with Jacob that we won't let you go until you bless us.
[00:47:59]  We pray this in Jesus' name.
[00:48:01]  Amen.