This sermon delves into the story of Jacob and how his human weaknesses and attempts to manipulate situations led to consequences, emphasizing the importance of trusting in God's plan and not relying on our own efforts. It highlights the need to yield to God's work, seek His guidance, and avoid trying to control our own destinies, ultimately learning to let go and let God work in our lives.

Genesis 27 is where we pick up tonight. Genesis 27. We're transitioning from the brief history of Isaac, really, and moving on into the life of Jacob. And, of course, we know God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was to these three men that the covenant blessing was given. Of course, it was given initially to Abraham when God called him out of his country in Ur of the Chaldees, and then it was passed from Abraham on to Isaac, and it will eventually pass on to Jacob, and we will see that tonight. But, interestingly, we'll see that Isaac is strangely reluctant to pass the blessing on to Jacob. So, let's look at the account. Genesis 27 verse 1. Now, it came to pass when Isaac was old, and his eyes were so dim that he could not see, that he called Esau, his older son, and said to him, my son, and he answered, here I am. Then he said, behold, now I am old, and I do not know the day of my death. Now, therefore, please take your weapons, your quiver, and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and make me savory food such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die. Once again, we see in this history that we're looking at of the men that God used, we're seeing this mixture of human weakness and God's grace and mercy. And here we see Isaac who knows that the blessing is to go to Jacob but evidently because of his own personal preference for Esau, he is attempting to circumvent the plan of God. And he is prepared to pronounce that Abrahamic blessing over Esau. Now, it's almost absolutely certain that he knew that the blessing was to go to Jacob. You remember back when Rebecca was pregnant, and there was that, there was a war going on in her womb. And as she prayed about it, the Lord spoke to her and told her there were two nations in her womb, and two different kinds of people would come forth from her womb. And then it was declared that the older would serve the younger. Now, I am certain that Isaac knew from Rebecca directly that God had spoken that to her. But here we see Isaac again, strangely, for a man of faith, for a man of God, we see him strangely seeking to pass the blessing on to Esau. And again, I think simply because Esau was Isaac's favorite. So, you know, as we look at this, and one of the things that we've done as we've been going through Genesis, one of the things that I've intentionally emphasized is the humanity of the people that God is dealing with. Because a lot of times we tend to have an unrealistic view of biblical characters. We tend a lot of times to think them more spiritual, more righteous, more holy than they actually were. It's important to remember what the scripture tells us about each and every one of them. They were men with passions like we have. They were subjected to the same kinds of weaknesses and the same kinds of faults. And the reason that I've sought to emphasize that as we've gone through is really to encourage us that, you know, even despite our weaknesses, and our foibles, and our failures, and our inconsistencies, God is going to get his work done. And he deals with us graciously, and he forgives us over and over again. And oftentimes he overrules our mistakes. And this is what we see over and over again in the lives of these patriarchs. So here's Isaac. He knows that Jacob is to be blessed, but he is pushing his will really against God's will, and he's attempting to bless Esau. Now, Rebecca was listening when Isaac spoke to Esau, his son, and Esau went to the field to hunt game and bring it. So Rebecca spoke to Jacob, her son, saying, Indeed, I heard your father speak to Esau, your brother, saying, Bring me game and make savory food for me that I may eat it and bless you in the presence of the Lord before my death. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice according to what I command you. Now, remember, Esau and Jacob are both full-grown adult men at this point. And here's Rebecca, interestingly, sort of ordering Jacob. And Jacob is unwisely at this point complying with Rebecca's wishes. So go now to the flock and bring me from there two choice kids of the goats, and I will make savory food from them for your father such as he loves. Then you shall take it to your father that he may eat it, that he may bless you before his death. So Rebecca, who, as we've already mentioned, had received that word from the Lord that Jacob is to receive the blessing. She sees Isaac attempting to circumvent God's will. And so now Rebecca comes up with a plan of her own to prevent Isaac from doing that. Now, as we read through this story, the thing that we're going to see more than anything else probably is we have four people who are completely in the flesh. Four people, God's people. This is the the holy family, if you will. And all four of them are just completely in the flesh in their, the way they're conducting themselves. Nobody's praying, nobody's seeking God, nobody's trusting God. It's sort of every man for himself. But again, in the end, the beautiful thing is God works out his plan. But here's what we've always got to keep in mind. When we jump into a situation and without seeking God or without God's direction and we start trying to make it happen ourselves, this is when we can create all kinds of difficulty and trouble for ourselves. God is still going to get his work accomplished. He's still going to bring to pass his ultimate purpose. But we will inevitably bring unnecessary difficulty and grief into our lives when we do these kinds of things. And remember, we saw that when we considered Ishmael and Abraham and Sarah's attempt to help God in that particular situation. So really Rebecca and Jacob are doing in many ways the same kind of thing that Abraham and Sarah did. What they're doing right now is they're trying to help God make sure the right person gets the blessing. And this is the mistake that they're making. Now Jacob said to his mother, now I like Jacob in this because he he definitely thinks this is a really bad plan. But at the same time he for whatever reason he he goes along with it. He says, look Esau my brother is a hairy man and I am a smooth-skinned man. Perhaps my father will feel me and I shall seem to be a deceiver to him and I shall bring a curse on myself and not a blessing. So Jacob's saying, you know mom I don't think this is really the best plan. But his mother said to him, let your curse be on me my son. Only obey my voice and go get them for me. And he went and he got them and he brought them to his mother. And his mother made savory food such as his father loved. Then Rebecca took the choice clothes of her elder son Esau which were with her in the house and put them on Jacob her younger son. And she put the skins of the kids of the goats on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. You know in my mind I wonder just what did this look like? How did they how did they arrange this? And so she gave him the savory food and the bread which she had prepared into the hand of her son Jacob. So he went to his father and said my father. And he said here I am. Who are you my son? Jacob said to his father I am Esau your first born. I have done just as you told me. Please arise sit and eat of my game that your soul may bless me. But Isaac said to his son, how is it that you have found it so quickly my son? And listen to this. And he said because the Lord your God brought it to me. So Jacob's fully sucked into it. Now he's you know he's lying and bringing the Lord into the situation. Then Isaac said to Jacob, I mean just you know put yourself in this situation for a moment. I mean talk about suspense. You know here's Jacob and he's already afraid that he's going to be found out. But look what Isaac does. He says please come near that I may feel you my son whether you are really my son Esau or not. So Jacob went near to Isaac his father and he felt him and said listen to this. The voice is Jacob's voice but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. Then he said are you really my son Esau? He said I am. He said bring it near to me and I will eat of my son's game so that my soul may bless you. So he brought it near to him and he ate and he brought him wine and he drank. Now here's kind of a sad thing. It seems that Isaac really at this stage was so anxious for dinner every conceivable warning sign that was there he just pushed it aside because I've got to get to that great meat that I love. I mean isn't that really what's going on here? It's obvious that Isaac senses that something's not quite right. This is the voice of Jacob but it feels like Esau. Are you really my son? And but yet we see that this this desire this you know basically fleshly desire his his appetite for his own height at this moment is overruling him and causing him to push reason aside just to fulfill his own personal bodily desire. And it's a sad state that Isaac has fallen into. He's of the covenant but yet we see that he's he's grown dim not just in his vision but he's grown a dole and dim spiritually as well. And because of that he's he has no no real discernment and so he succumbs to this deceptive ploy. And then Isaac his father said to him come near now and kiss me my son and he came near and he kissed him and he smelled the smell of his clothing and he blessed him and said surely the smell of my son is like the smell of a field which the lord has blessed. Therefore may god give you of the dew of heaven of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you be master over your brethren and let your own mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be those who bless you. So Isaac pronounces the blessing and now it happened as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob and Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac his father that Esau his brother came in from hunting. He also made savory food and he brought it to his father and he said to his father let my father arise and eat of his son's game that your soul may bless me. And Isaac his father said to him who are you? So he said I am your son your firstborn Esau. Then Isaac trembled exceedingly and said who? Where is the one who hunted game and brought it to me? I ate all of it before you came and listen to this and I have blessed him and indeed he shall be blessed. You see this is where you see Isaac knew that Jacob was to receive the blessing but he was intentionally trying to bless Esau because of his own preference but now he says I blessed him and indeed he shall be blessed. This cannot be undone this cannot be reversed this is God's basically this was God's doing and Isaac is now acknowledging that. And so Esau when he heard these words he cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and he said to his father bless me me also oh my father but he said your brother came with deceit and has taken away your blessing and Esau said is he not rightly named heel catcher for he has supplanted me these two times listen to this he took away my birthright and now he has taken away my blessing but you see look at Esau Isaac did not take away his birthright did he Esau gave it away remember the story Esau gave his birthright away for what a bowl of stew and as we pointed out before the problem with Esau was he was just simply not interested in spiritual things but now he realizes that in not having the spiritual blessing he will receive less of the material blessing and so all of this lamentation by Esau it's not really any kind of grief over the fact that he's lost out spiritually it's really over the fact that he's lost out materially he's lost out politically in the sense that he's not going to have the place of power within the family and when we come to the new testament the new testament the book of hebrews tells us that Esau was essentially a profane person and we talked about that before he was a profane person in the sense that he just did not have any real interest in the things of the spirit Jacob on the other hand he has a deep interest in spiritual things Jacob is not a perfect person by any stretch and we see here that he goes into this whole thing of deception but on the other hand you have to commend Jacob in as much as he was longing for the spiritual blessing that's what he wanted he had that heart you know much like David it's interesting I just finished myself again going through the life of David and you know when you follow the life of David of course David is known biblically as the man after God's heart but when you see David conducting himself throughout his life you know there's a lot of ups and downs in David's life and there are a lot of inconsistencies in his life and you know a lot of times I think Joab gets a really bad rap I think it would have been really hard to be in Joab's position because David did a lot of really foolish things but nevertheless he's still recognized as the man after God's heart and basically what it comes down to is this that although these guys had weaknesses they had failures they had sins yet they were men who the overall tenor of their life was they were in pursuit of God they were seeking God they were hungering for God they were thirsting for God and in as much as that was the case with them a lot of these other things God in many ways just sort of overlooked them and looked more specifically at the the real issues of the heart that's not to excuse any of their behavior and it's not to excuse the behavior of Jacob here and we're going to see that Jacob's actions here will lead to a lot of difficulty down the road for him but nevertheless he retains that blessing the blessing is not retracted because it was deceitfully you know received but the blessing remains and as we go on in the story we'll see that God comes and he actually confirms that indeed Jacob is the blessed one and so Isaac then said to Esau indeed I have made him your master verse 37 I have given to him as servants with grain and wine I have sustained him what shall I do now for you my son and Esau said to his father have you only one blessing my father bless me me also oh my father and Esau lifted up his voice and wept then Isaac his father answered and said to him behold your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth and of the dew of heaven from above by your sword you shall live and you shall serve your brother and it shall come to pass when you become restless that you shall break his yoke from your neck so here's the beginning of trouble so Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him and Esau said in his heart the days of mourning for my father are at hand then I will kill my brother Jacob so immediately Jacob is going to begin to reap the consequences of his distrust in the Lord and as he's attempted through deceit to help God fulfill his plan there are going to be these consequences that are going to follow him now when you look at Rebecca and Jacob you know in one sense it seemed like it was necessary to do what they did and in another sense they gained the desired result but as we know in so many different ways um the end doesn't necessarily justify the means they got the blessing but they got it in the wrong way and here's the thing that we need to realize ourselves because in in our lives personally there are similar promises that God has made to us you know things that he will speak to us about our own lives personally about his plan for our life about the things that he wants to do with us and in us and through us and so forth and quite often as we're traveling on that road of faith toward the fulfillment of those things things will arise that seem to contradict everything that God has told us things will arise that seem to indicate that God's plan is going to somehow fail unless we come up with a a way to you know prevent that from happening and and many times we can we can justify our attempts to help God but yet we have to know this that always in every case that is the wrong course of action it is the wrong course of action and even if we gain the desired result immediately know this that somewhere down the road those things are going to come back and they're going to come back and bite you so these are things that we want to we want to learn lessons from the lives of these people because these are the kinds of things that happen in the lives of God's people all throughout history a few years back I was reading through the old testament commentary by a man named Alfred Edersheim and his comments on this particular incident I think were profound let me read to you what he said he said such hours come to most of us when it almost seems as if necessity obliged and holy wisdom prompted us to accomplish in our own strength that which nevertheless we should leave in God's hand if once we enter on such a course it will probably not be long before we cast to the winds any scruples about the means to be employed so that we secure the object desired and which possibly may seem to us in accordance with the will of God so what he's saying is you know there are times when it just seems like there's no other alternative and so we've got to take it into our own hands we've got to come up with our own plan and then as we move in that direction it almost seems like well God must be leading us now in this way because look it's working it's happening the philosophy that dominates our culture is the philosophy of pragmatism and and the philosophy of pragmatism is simply uh whatever gets the job done that's that's the means through which to accomplish it the important thing is the end the means are irrelevant that philosophy of pragmatism is not just prevalent in our culture it's prevalent in the church today and in much of the church today there's no longer the question of well how would God have us to do something that's not even in the thinking process of many leaders we have an objective we've got to get more people we've got to get more action we've got to have more success and so here's the different strategies to do it we're going to employ this it's going to happen and of course in the end we're going to thank God for it but so much of it is built on nothing but the flesh and that can happen in the life of a ministry that can happen of course in the life of the individual but here's what edersheim says i think this is so profound he says here also faith is the only remedy faith which leaves God to carry out his own purposes content to trust him absolutely and to follow him wherever he leads and God's way listen God's way is never through the thicket of human cunning and devices man when we start you know coming up with some cunning plan we start devising we start scheming just like Rebecca was doing and just like Jacob was was brought into when we start doing this type of thing we know we should know at least we're not in the spirit we're in the flesh we're not in the spirit and things might come your way at times and you might find yourself in circumstances or in a situation where it will seem that God's not coming through he's not fulfilling his promise he's not doing what he said he would do oh he must want me to jump in the middle and sort it out myself God must want me to take the reins here never take the reins of your own life you can be certain that that's going to lead to disaster we have to learn to leave things in God's hands and the difficult thing about that is that God rarely if ever does anything the way we think that he should or that we the way we anticipated that he would or in the time frame that we think he ought to do it in so where do we find ourselves we find ourselves waiting waiting on the Lord but we can be confident and the last thing he says he quotes from Isaiah he that believes shall not make haste shall not act hastily and then he says this nor need he for God will do it all for him if God has given you a promise if God has spoken something to your heart about some significant aspect of your life of your future of whatever it might be and and you had this deep you know confidence that man the Lord spoke this to me but now time has passed and it doesn't seem to be coming together like you thought the Lord had told you it would and not only that it seems to be going in the complete opposite direction and you've been thinking well maybe maybe I didn't hear the Lord right and maybe I need to jump in the middle of it and a lot of times what will happen is well-intended people will come along and say you know what are you doing don't you know that God helps those who help themselves come on now get up you know jump in there do something about it take some action those are the times that we have to fall back on what God has promised you see the thing is Rebecca and Jacob did not need to do any of this stuff and again as we see it's only going to lead to trouble in their lives it led to trouble but they didn't need to do any of it they could have simply got together the better thing for Rebecca to have done would have been to say Jacob let's pray let's call out to the Lord the better thing for Jacob to have done would have said mom I know that you think this is the course of action but this isn't the right thing let's trust the Lord let's seek the Lord let's wait on the Lord and God could have easily circumvented the thing himself but because they took it into their own hands now they accomplish their immediate goal preventing the blessing from coming to Esau but it never would have come anyway because God had declared already before the older shall serve the younger so in a sense they're they're trying to prevent something that could have never happened anyway and in doing so they're bringing hardship upon themselves and immediately we see Esau is plotting to kill Jacob and the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebecca so she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him surely your brother Esau comforts himself concerning you by intending to kill you now therefore my son obey my voice arise flee to my brother Laban in Haran and stay with him a few days until your brother's fury turns away stay with him a few days Jacob never saw Rebecca again Rebecca never saw Jacob again he left and it would be more than 20 years before he returned and by the time he returned Rebecca had died and so you see how right here in the story we see that again although they they gained the immediate result that they thought they had to gain securing the blessing but look what they lost they lost the the fellowship they lost the relationship the family was split up over this and divided and these are the things that happen when we try to take things into our own hands so she said stay a few days until your brother's fury turns away until his anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him then I will send and bring you from there why should I be bereaved also of you both in one day and Rebecca said to Isaac I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth if Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth like these who are the daughters of the land what good will my life be to me so you remember Esau had taken the wives of the land so so now Jacob is being sent much as Abraham had sent his servant to obtain a bride so now Jacob is being sent so Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him and said to him you shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan arise and go to Padanerim to the house of Bethuel your mother's father and take yourself a wife from there of your of the daughters of Laban your mother's brother may God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you that you may be an assembly of peoples and give you the blessing of Abraham so here it is clearly passed to Jacob give you the blessing of Abraham to you and your descendants with you that you may inherit the land in which you are a stranger which God gave to Abraham so Isaac sent Jacob away and he went to Padanerim to Laban the son of Bethuel the Syrian the brother of Rebekah the mother of Jacob and Esau and so just verses six through nine a little side note on Esau Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padanerim to take himself a wife from there and that he blessed him and gave him a charge saying you shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan which again Esau had done and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Padanerim also Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan did not please his father Isaac so Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son the sister of Nabajoth to be his wife in addition to the wives that he had so here Esau seems to be trying to get back into favor with the family but now Jacob went out from Beersheba and he went toward Haran so he came to a certain place and he stayed there all night because the sun had set and he took one of the stones of the place and put it at his head and he lay down in that place to sleep then he dreamed and behold a ladder was set up on the earth and its top reached to heaven and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it and behold the Lord stood above it and said I am the Lord God of Abraham your father the God of Isaac the land on which you lie I will give to you and your seed also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east to the north and the south and in you and your seed all of the families of the earth shall be blessed so remember the same promise that God gave to Abraham is now being communicated to Jacob in you and in your seed all of the families of the earth shall be blessed behold I am with you and I will keep you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land and I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it so notice God again no mention of the the deception no no rebuke no condemnation of Jacob whatsoever God is just simply reiterating the promise to him but as we follow now the story we're going to see that although the spiritual blessings are intact and really to a large extent irrevocable we're going to see that there is as the scripture tells us there is that reaping that's going to take place of the things that Jacob has sown we're going to see how Jacob had deceived and he will himself be deceived we're going to see how Jacob had manipulated and all of those kinds of things all of this stuff is going to come back to him and again the point is this he remains God's man he's blessed the spiritual blessings and promises are still there in his life but on the other hand on a very practical level he's having to reap a lot of consequences to his actions and so again this is the thing that we can and should seek to avoid you know God will forgive our sins God will have mercy on our failures God will overlook our foibles he'll forgive us he'll love us he'll take us to heaven eventually but we might have to go through sort of a hell on earth of our own making because of our refusal to trust him or our unwillingness to obey him or whatever the case might be so with Jacob we see that the the spiritual blessing is there but we're going to see as we follow the history that this act of not trusting God brought a lot of misery into Jacob's life but back to the immediate story here God promises Jacob that he's going to be with him he's going to bless him so Jacob awakes and I love this here surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it he's fleeing from Esau he's in a strange place he's alone he's probably somewhat frightened maybe to some extent he lies down with a rock for a pillow but yet the Lord meets him right there surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it you know isn't it true that sometimes it's in the place you least expect that God meets you have you ever had that kind of experience you know you're in a situation and you're just thinking this is the worst possible situation how did I get here what am I doing this is and yet you find strangely the Lord meets you in that place you might even be at a place where it seems like the Lord has abandoned you and then suddenly you find that God is in this place but I think of how many stories could be told of of this kind of a thing that people have experienced I have one vivid memory and I actually have the date written in my Bible it was December of 1991 and I was in the midst of a real struggle and battle with my health and I'll never forget I was just in this season of just the deepest depression and you know feeling just from the mere standpoint of my my senses feeling like God had abandoned me and I remember being alone in my office and literally crying out to God and just you know feeling like God was a million miles from where I was at and just so unexpectedly and so suddenly the presence of the Lord filled that room so powerfully and God just spoke a word to me that has encouraged me to this very day and has carried me through so many difficulties and challenging seasons and you know it was one of those kinds of things for me where it was a passage of scripture that God pointed me to and it was such an obscure passage it was a passage I never would have even necessarily noticed myself and that was to me even more confirmation that God had given it because I couldn't have found that scripture if I was looking for it I didn't even know it existed and there it was and suddenly the Lord was speaking this word to me and it was a word that was so pertinent for that very moment but it's just been one of those words that's come back to me over and over and over but the point is this as I went into my office that day I had no idea that the Lord was in that place and he met me there and perhaps you have a similar kind of a thing but this is this is quite often what happens God knows exactly when we need to have these kinds of encounters these kinds of moments of encouragement and you know it's amazing to me how long you can go on just a simple word from God have you ever noticed that remember how Elijah he ate that meal that the angel gave him and then he went what was it 40 days in the strength of that meal and it's like that with the word isn't it when God gives you a word that just a word a sentence just one scripture can carry you through 20 years or 50 years you just keep going back to that word and here God meets Jacob in that sort of a way and he was afraid and he said how awesome is this place this is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven then Jacob rose early in the morning and he took the stone that he had put at his head he set it set up set it up as a pillar and he poured oil on top of it and he called the name of that place Bethel which means the house of God but the name of that city had been Luz previously then Jacob made a vow saying if God will be with me or probably more accurately since God will be with me some people accuse Jacob of even trying to work a deal with God right here okay God if you'll do that then I guess I'll do this well sounds like a good deal but the tone of it doesn't really seem to be that way Jacob is just really he's embracing the covenant that God has just made with him and so since God will be with me and keep me in this way that I am going and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on so that I come back to my father's house in peace then the Lord shall be my God so in some ways it seems that this is that defining moment with Jacob where he really does himself personally embrace the covenant with the Lord it's no longer you know because he's simply the the son of Isaac or the grandson of Abraham but now he is personally embracing the Lord he's entering into that covenant with the Lord and this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God's house and of all that you give me I will surely give a tenth to you so Jacob enters into this covenant relationship with the Lord we now have moved just you know out from the life of Isaac and now fully into the life of Jacob and the remainder of Genesis will deal with Jacob and with his sons and then a large section will deal with his son Joseph but the rest of the of the book is is really about this man who would later be named Israel and from his sons the nation that God promised to give to Abraham would be raised up and so many lessons await us as we look at Jacob again a man who was in covenant relationship with God a man who was blessed but nevertheless a man a man with a lot of inconsistencies and a lot of self-sufficiency a man who had a lot of hesitancy and a man who had a lot of breaking ahead of him so maybe there's application there for us breaking breaking is a good thing it sounds like not such a good thing but it's a good thing because it puts us in a position to receive the blessing of God you know one of the things that really keeps us back from so much of what God has for us is is it's just our own ambition our own self-will our our tendency to kind of just you know try to control our own lives and and Jacob is a man who we're going to see that's his biggest struggle he's a man in control and he's a man who wants to be in control but the great objective of God throughout his life is to break him and to bring him to a dependency on the Lord and the sooner we let God break us the better things will be because it opens that that floodgate of blessing God's able to do all that he wants to do and really you know to a large degree the Christian life is it's a lot about just you know we we use that term sometimes let go and let God and and there's truth to that it's about letting go and trusting the Lord and saying in the end not my will but your will be done and the more we learn to do that the more we set ourselves up for for God's blessing and that will be in the big picture that will be much of what we will be looking at as we follow Jacob throughout the rest of the story let's pray Lord thank you that like Jacob should have done we can trust you you're faithful and Lord we can leave things in your hands and we can know that you you are a God who keeps his word and the things that you have declared to us the things that you've spoken the things that you've promised the things that you've shown us we don't have to strive we don't have to connive we don't have to try to manipulate the situation we don't and shouldn't of course take things into our own hands Lord we can trust you and how we thank you Lord for that great truth and these many stories in the Bible that illustrate the same thing for us over and over again so Lord help us to learn that help us to learn that trusting you is the best way to live help us to learn Lord that you have the better plan and help us Lord to stop trying to control our own lives and our own destinies help us Lord to just let go and let you do what you're desiring to do in us so that you might work that which you desire to work through us help us Lord in these days to be men and women who are yielded to you not trusting in the flesh but leaning on the spirit having begun in the spirit Lord we don't want to move into the flesh we want to remain in the spirit help us to do that we pray in Jesus name amen amen well let's stand and if you need some prayer tonight of course the pastors are here up front and available to pray with you may God bless and encourage you and may we all more and more just yield ourselves up to that work of his spirit that we might find ourselves in that place of blessing God bless let's close with one final song Jesus be the center be my source be my light Jesus oh Jesus be the center be my hope be my song Jesus be the fire in my heart be the wind in these sails be the reason that I live Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus be my vision be my path be my guide Jesus Jesus be my passion be the love of my life Jesus oh be the fire in my heart be the wind in these sails be the reason that I live Jesus Jesus be the fire in my heart be the wind in these sails be the reason that I live Jesus Jesus Jesus God bless you guys