Gospel

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Sunday 9/13/09 Pastor Alex’s sermon:Family Matters Gen 25, Gen 26:7, Gen 27, Gen 28, Gen 29 Gen 30

Families have remained the same over time. Some are real dysfunctional and some are cool with a little dysfunction. Either way, families are NOT perfect! There isn’t a functional family on the earth because of sin. We are all sinners and that’s why there is NO perfect family. We are ALL dysfunctional!
**Dysfunction:
Gen 26:7 Isaac goes to a city and lies about Rebecca being his wife. She is so beautiful that he lies and says she is his sister so he won’t be killed for her. Isaac saw his daddy Abraham lie and say Sarah was his sister when they had gone to Egypt. Deception was in their family.
**Dysfunction:
Gen 25:33, Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. His birthright wasn’t important to him. Esau despised his birthright and was more concerned about the desires of the flesh at the moment than for his future. Gen 27:1-29 Rebecca loved Jacob more and told him to lie to Isaac so he could get Esau’s first born blessing. It was her idea to deceive Isaac and she brought more deception into the family.
**Dysfunction:
Gen 2:46 Once Esau learned of the blessing deception, he wanted to kill Jacob. So Rebecca has the second idea to lie again to Isaac. She says she want to help Jacob get a good wife so she wants to send him to her brother Labans’ house.
**Dysfunction:
Gen 29:20 Once Jacob is at Laban’s house, he makes a deal to work seven years for gorgeous Rachel’s hand in marriage. Well, Laban deceives Jacob by sliding in the older sister (plain-Jane) Leah into the marriage bed instead. Jacob wakes us and its Leah he is married to ! So Jacob had to work seven more years to get Rachel.
**Dysfunction:
Gen 30:37 Jacob gets wealthy by “stealing” Laban’s wealth in livestock. Jacob finds a way to make Laban’s sheep come out spotted and then they belong to him instead. So Jacob has to flee into the desert cause Laban want to kill him for this. Jacob had learned from his family how to do all this deception. Gen 28:12-19 Jacob is alone in the desert when he wrestles with an angel and finally accepts God. Then God later changes his name to Israel.

******Learn From This Story*******

1) God knows our future.

2) We have an inheritance in Heaven and can live eternity with God. Some of us despise our birthright like Esau did and don’t accept Jesus.

3) Some of us make excuses for our dysfunctions. We continue to sin and be dysfunctional! We say our mama was like that and thats just the way we are. God made us that way and its just the way we are. These are just some of the excuses we make for being dysfunctional (drunks, liars, thieves, bums, sloppy, lazy etc. etc.).

4) As believers we must decide to correct the things/relationships in our lives that don’t look like God. This is the action step that we must take. We must identify the dysfunction in our family and in ourselves. Just like when Jacob wrestled with the angel for a blessing to get free from his dysfunction, WE must call on God to help us get rid of our dysfunctions too. We have to keep on keeping on so we can see the great things God has in store for us.
DON’T QUIT!! PURSUE GOD!!
Let God Change Us and Let God Bless Us!
DON’T QUIT ON GOD!!

Amen

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