Identity Crisis | Week 3 | Daniel Goulding

It's funny, as I was preparing for this week, I was kind of thinking back over the course of my life and the different seasons of life as different things kind of defined who I was. And the first one that I was thinking about was when I was in preschool.

And memory is a really funny thing, isn't it? Like most of the time I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, but then I have these last night I had Chick fil A, so I can remember that because it's Jesus' favorite food. Normally

I can't, But yet for some reason there's like these really like old memories that are just seared into my memory bank. And one of those is when I was in preschool,

my mom and I had this routine and again, I make no bones about it. Like it's Mother's Day, like I am as through and through a mama's boy as you can get. You know what I mean? Like me and my mom are close. I love my dad too, but man, I've always just been like a mama's boy. And so when I would go to preschool, we had this routine every day where she would walk me in, we'd put my back pack in the cubby and she would like show me around the classroom and then I'd hold her hand, we'd through the gate, she'd give me a kiss goodbye, then she would leave. And then I would go about my joyful day in preschool. Well, there was one day where

I don't know what happened. I'm assuming that she was busy, Nothing malicious on her end. But we go into school, we put my backpack into the cubby

and there was like this giant pumpkin outside. And so I got distracted and I'm looking at that and then I realized like, oh, I gotta say bye to my mom. So I go to find her and I can't find her anywhere. And so I run to the gate where typically we have our kiss and she leaves and then I go about the rest of my day and the gate is locked and I can see my mom's car driving away. And I'm like, I didn't get my kiss, this whole day is ruined. So I do what any good preschool kid would do, and I just have an utter meltdown. You know what mean? Like just completely lose it. And all these thug preschool kids around me just start making fun of me. And for the next season of my life, was known as like this mama's boy that was just a crybaby. And luckily that wore off by the time I got to elementary school. But then in the elementary school age, I got a different nickname because

I was a raging fan of the King of Pop. I mean, come on somebody. I raised in the 90s, like that's like one of the greatest generations

out there, right? Pre cell phone, pre internet, you know what I mean? We had to go outside and play. I'll explain to you later what outside means, but it's basically what you do virtually, but we just did it in real life.

And I was just a huge Michael Jackson fan. Now in fairness, the '90s weren't his best years. He kind of peaked in the '80s, but the '90s he got a little bit squirrely. But I was just a huge Michael Jackson fan. And so to the demise of my dad, I took all of my baseball gloves and I cut the fingertips off of them, and I would walk around with my baseball gloves to look like Michael Jackson. And so I developed a nickname and everybody just called me Jackson. And so for a number of years, that's what everybody referred to me as.

And luckily somebody told me like, hey, if you go into middle school and high school still wearing those gloves, that's a sure way to get your head pushed into a toilet and flushed while your head is in there, right? So somehow I stopped wearing the gloves. And then I went through just the awkward teenage years, you know what I mean? And I'm just under six'five now and I think that when I went into seventh or eighth grade, was five'six and in about twelve months I went from five'six to like six'five but nothing grew proportionately.

It was like my legs would grow and then my torso would stay the same size, my knuckles would drag on the floor. Like I just was a goofy, weird looking dude.

And so here I am, this skinny white kid with braces and a buzzed head. Because again, in my family there were so many of us, the only haircut we got was when my dad would line us up and literally shave all of our heads in a row, right? And then again on Mother's Day, I can throw my mom under the bus. But there was one time my mom did it and she didn't realize that before you put the

razor on the kid's head, you have to put a guard on it. So my little brother goes first and she just goes, and takes it down to the skin. And I'm like, oh, Dennis, it looks awesome, man. You're gonna love that for sure. And then for solidarity,

my mom makes me and my brother shave our heads down too. We're crying because we knew it was happening at that point.

But that was a haircut in my family growing up. It just was a buzzed head. So here I am, this tall skinny white kid with braces and a buzzed head. And the biggest movie at the time was Toy Story. And so somebody at some point goes, man, you look like that kid that tortures toys.

And I'm like, what? Like I totally don't torture toys. You know what mean? Like I don't do that. But then somebody called me Sid and that nickname, man, more than anything else, stuck with me. And still to this day, some twenty years later, I will run into people from that time and season of life and they'll go, oh, what's up, Sid?

Like, you even know my real name, man? And the funny part is the reason I kinda start there is because I venture to guess with all the people we have sitting in here today that some of you have had similar experiences. Right? You've done something, didn't like something, wore something, said something, went somewhere.

And because of that thing, you develop some type of nickname. And the reason that I kind of use it as an illustration is because it defines what we do

as humans, right? We I think come out of the womb almost asking the question, who are we? Really trying to figure out man, who are we? What is this whole thing in life that we're doing?

And so the low hanging fruit to answer the question of who we are is just the physical attributes that describe you. In every single thing that I just walked through, there was elements of each of them that were true. Yes. They were things that I did. They were things that I wore. They were things that I looked like.

But all they really were were descriptions of me. But for those seasons, they felt like the very definition of me. And this is the thing that I wanna spend the next few moments looking at is what you and I sometimes will do as we try to go down what I believe is a noble and holy pursuit

of trying to figure out man, who are we? I believe it's one of the most important questions that we will ask, but how we find the answers to fill in the void of that question, we have to be really careful not to just reach for the low hanging fruit of things that just describe us because that's not the definition

of you. I specifically want to talk about today one of the things that I've seen take place in kind of erupt inside of the church in the last few years. I don't know if you guys have heard about them, but there's a personality test out there called the Enneagram. Anybody ever heard of the Enneagram?

All right, some of you were really fired up and threw your hand up really quickly. You're like, yes, I'm a seven wing eight, right? And again, think personality tests are helpful. They can be really good, but we have to remember that they are just something that describes us.

And the church's response, which it feels like the church's response to everything, is it's either throw it out because the logo of the enneagram looks like pentagram. So that means it must be of the devil or I've seen churches go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum

and go, hey, this is the way that we have to be known. Therefore, we're all gonna use this and as a culture and as a church community, we'll just refer to each other as like a one wing three. And when somebody walks in and says something like, oh Jan, that's such a three way to respond. And then we justify our sin and we're like, I'm not a jerk, I'm just an eight. I'm a challenger, just who I naturally am.

And all of these things, nicknames, things that people have put on us, personality tests that we use, all of these things are okay if they're just describing

parts of us. Here's the big idea I want to spend the next few moments looking at if you're taking notes. You and I have to be really careful not to let what describes you define you.

If it's a mistake that you made and that thing has stuck with you, you got to remember that's not the definition of who you are. That's just something that describes a momentary decision that you made. But just like the bad things that don't describe you, a tool like the Enneagram,

like a personality test, Myers Briggs or Strength Finders or something like that, all of those things that they can be helpful to be a tool, but you and I have to remember, they only describe you. They don't define you. And there becomes a point where it gets weird

and what was meant to just describe you now feels like it's the very thing that defines you and your whole worldview is centered around that one thing.

Think that there's some things if you're taking notes, I think personality tests can be really helpful as we go through the process of answering the question of who are we. If you're taking notes, here's a few things I think personality tests can be used for. It's going to come on the screen right here.

I think personality tests can be really, really helpful in how you and I learn to communicate with each other, specifically in organizational leaderships inside of your marriage and figuring out family dynamics. If you've never done a personality test and you have no idea what I'm talking about,

I would encourage you. If there's tension sometimes in communication with your marriage or your coworkers or your family members,

a tool like the Enneagram or Myers Briggs or Strength Finders can be an incredible resource to go to, to help you figure out your natural wirings and how you hear things and why you respond certain ways. Me and my wife use it all the time. It's something that's really helpful. Me and my wife on paper could not be more opposite.

I like hot weather, she likes cold weather. Like I like to go to parties, my wife likes to stay home, she loves animals, I don't like animals. You know what mean? Like there's everything is different, but here's the beauty is when those complexities are understood, it's what can make us

a force to be reckoned with. The same is true about working for an organization. At the church here, we have a staff of almost 100 people. Every single one of them, we take them through a personality test so we can help them understand how to better relate to the people around them. But what we have to be really careful to do again, because as humans, we are inherently trying to answer the question, who are we? We will do the same thing that these kids did as I was growing up and we will just take an attribute of us and we will ascribe something more to it than it's meant to have. And it will go from a helpful tool that describes us and it'll become something that really defines us.

And the problem friends is if we get our definition of who we are from anything other than the word of God and who God says that we are, it will lead us down some paths that we don't want to end up in.

So what I wanna do is look at the very first person that ever took a personality test in the book of Genesis and see how he responded. I'm just kidding, that story is not in the Bible. Can you imagine if it was? And he's like, I'm a seven wing eight. Like this is kind of the hard part with the biblical precedence in understanding how we as Christians can utilize the tools of personality tests, right? This is a new thing.

But the idea of somebody's personality leaning into their personality is something that we see all over scripture.

And so what I wanna look at is the guy in the Bible named Jacob. And if you've been in church, you've heard of his name, you've heard of his story probably, but I want to hopefully this morning show us some new things that we can see from somebody who tried to lean into his natural wirings and the trouble that it got him in and where he ultimately found the solution that led him to the life that he really wanted. Okay, Genesis chapter 25.

Are we there? Come on church, are we there? Yes. Hey, there we go. And if you don't have a Bible, it'll be on the big iPad Bible next to me. So Genesis chapter 25, here's how the story starts.

This is Jacob's birth story. Okay. It's very fitting for Mother's Day. It's kinda funny. I didn't mean to plan it, but it just worked out that way. Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was unable

to have children. Just a little bit of context if you're new to the church world. The guys that we call the fathers of the faith is Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Abraham was a guy who was 90 years old. God came to him and said, hey, through you I'm gonna birth a nation. And it was a really weird promise because he was old and he had no kids yet. And so Abraham, just like his son Isaac,

they struggled with infertility but God birthed a miracle through them. And Abraham ultimately has Isaac as a son. And then Isaac we're about to see is going to have Jacob. Okay. So Isaac, him and his wife, they pray because they don't have children. Notice this, watch this, okay? They start praying for children

and then the Lord answered Isaac's prayer and Rebecca became pregnant with twins.

Verse 22 says, but the two children struggled with each of each other in her womb. Notice this, this is the most honest Mother's Day prayer I've ever seen in the Bible. So she went to ask the Lord about it and she said, God, why is this happening to me? Okay. This mom

in one verse goes from God, would you please give me kids to God going, God, why did you give me kids? I mean, for any of you who've had children, you know you've prayed this prayer. You're right, like God, I love them. I just don't know if I like them. Thank you for them, I think. And

so we see Rebecca. Again, you've gotta see this scene because it sets up everything, okay? Rebecca and Isaac,

they go to like their doctor's appointment to figure out the genders of the baby. They do the little jelly thing and they put the little thing on her belly and they're looking at the ultrasound picture and they go, hey, shocker, you're actually having twins.

And then she looks and the babies are fighting in the womb. Like this is sibling rivalry to a whole new degree, right? The babies are fighting and she's like, God why is this happening to me? And look what happens here.

It says in verse 23, And the Lord told her, the sons in your womb are actually going to become two nations.

From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals. If you're taking notes, highlight, underline, circle this next verse. It's so important for us to see. Because one nation will be stronger than the other and your older son will serve your younger son. Don't miss this.

From the very beginning of the story of Jacob entering the world, there was a promise spoken over his life. God had promised through Isaac's children that he would continue the promise that he had given Jacob's grandfather, Abraham, that through you I'm gonna birth the nation.

But up until this point, every single time that blessing was passed to the next generation, it always went to the firstborn son.

In this culture, being the firstborn meant more than just being the top dog at home because you're the oldest and you can punk all your little siblings. Like this was everything. There was a massive spiritual blessing that came with it, but there was also a massive financial component to this.

As the firstborn son, you would also get the lion's share of your parents estate. And we're talking about families that were multimillionaires. They had tons of money. But from the very beginning, don't miss this, the promise was always

for the younger son to get the blessing. The older son was always going to serve the younger son. A second Jacob is this younger son. So that means from before he was ever created, God has spoken a promise over his life that he was going to be the one to carry the family blessing. Look how the story continues.

It says, And when the time came to give birth, Rebecca discovered that she did indeed have twins. Verse 25, it says, The first one, I love this, was very red at birth and covered with thick hair like a fur coat. Like how hairy and red do you have to be for the bible to explicitly mention it? You know what I mean?

Like, this has to be the ugliest baby in the history of babies. Like, it's a sunburnt Chewbacca that comes out first. Right?

And you know, we've all had those moments where your friend comes over and they have a baby and you're like, oh, it's so cute. Like there's no way anybody looked at this baby and actually lied and told them that this thing was cute. But the good news is, is for all my hairy dudes out there, you've got a patron saying, okay? His name is Esau

because he was born hairy and don't miss this, the parents, it's brilliant. So they name him, they literally look at the baby and they name him hairy. Esau literally translated means hairy. They're like, he's a little red hairy ball. Awesome. His name is gonna be Harry. Brilliant. Okay, let's move on to baby number two.

Then the other twin was born with his hand grasping at Esau's heel. So they name him Jacob. This has to be the most bizarre birthing story in the history of births, right? The first baby comes out as a hairy red ball.

And then the next baby comes out moments later and he's reaching and holding on to said hairy baby's ankle. Like what is happening here? You know what I mean? Like this is just wild. And yet this is the very introduction of Jacob to the world. And the reason that it's important for us to remember

is that Jacob was given a promise that you will always be the one that the older brother is going to serve. You're going to get the blessing. You're going to be the one that's chosen. Yet before he was even cognizant, before he was even awake,

Jacob had this propensity to try to get ahead through any means necessary. What is he doing? He's literally trying to pull his brother out of being first in line to come out of his mom's womb so that he can be first from before he's even breathing, this kid is deceiving and trying to get ahead.

If there's anybody in scripture that could make an argument for saying, this is just who I am. This is just the way that I'm wired. I did not choose this. This is the family I come from. This is just the way that I am. It is Jacob.

And what we're gonna see is that Jacob is going to learn to use this type mentality of deceiving to try to get ahead his entire life. And again, he comes from a family. His dad was a deceiver. Abraham, his grandfather was a deceiver. This comes from a family line and it's something that he's just naturally born with.

If we were to look, I bet you if he took a personality test and took the Enneagram, this dude would be an eight off the charts, right? A challenger to the nth degree probably would make a great business owner and driver and builder.

Now here's where this matters for you and I, because there's a couple of things that we have to see. Okay, there's three truths that we have to remember about our identity. Okay, the first one when it comes to the truths that are true about us, that were true about Jacob

is inside all of us, inside every single human is what's called the Imago Dei. It's Latin for the image of God. Just like Jacob, before he was born, there was a promise spoken over his life. Every single one of you sitting in this room, before you were born, there was a promise spoken over your life.

That the Bible tells us all the way back in the book of Genesis when God was speaking and creating the earth that everything we saw was created. And then God stopped and he prepared the crescendo, the pinnacle of his creation. And it was going to be you and I. And in that very person, he puts in them his very spirit.

The image of God, friends, is inside of every one of us. That means that if you're here, you're here for a very specific purpose and reason. You were born on purpose, for a purpose, and with a purpose. You are not here by random.

God has something incredible that he wants to do through your life. But if you're not careful, what you and I will do

is we will try to get even sometimes good things, God things that have been spoken over our lives, but we'll do it in a way that is outside of the context and more importantly, the timing of which God created it And we'll lean into our natural personalities and our natural tendencies and we'll go, this must be how God's going to accomplish these things. And we forget

that yes, we all have the imago dei in us. We all have purpose built into our very DNA. But even the idea of understanding ourselves through the idea of a personality test, the reason that it will always fall short

of truly answering the question of who am I is because here's the other part that we have to understand about the Imago Dei. What happened in the Garden of Eden, sin marred that image. So even the broken image that we have of ourselves

is something that traces back to the very Garden of Eden. And what was the lie that Adam and Eve fell for? Satan told them that if you eat this fruit, you will be like God, which friends was something they already had. From the very beginning, they were created to be like God.

And yet they fell for the lie to get the thing that they already had and they broke the entire thing. You know what's wild to me? If you go home today and you Google identity biblical word search, you will be blown away at how many times identity is mentioned inside the Bible.

Really the only theme that I could find this week that is consistent in almost every single book of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is identity. It's almost like this is the one area that Satan knew if he could get us to stumble here, it would throw the rest of the entire thing into a tailspin.

There are so many stories of people, people that we celebrate as heroes of our faith that made really poor decisions and then God comes and meets them. And what does He do when He meets them? He doesn't give them a three step process back to their best life now. Most of the time, every single time, He comes back and goes, this is not who you are. Gideon, you are not a guy that's just hiding in a cave. You are a mighty warrior. You always have been. And what's wild is when their identity is restored and they remember who they are and whose they are, they then go on to live a life to do the impossible. Friends, this is why it's so important for us to understand

because inside of us is a world changer. Somebody that's supposed to make a massive impact for the breaths that we have while we're on this side of eternity. But because of the fallen world that we live in and the shattering of that image,

we now have to remember the last thing that this identity is something that we have to actively fight to recover,

but we have to understand we will never be able to discover it. This is the greatest lie that the world has told us is that if you just do these things, you'll discover who you are. A personality test will never tell you who you are. It will just tell you why you respond certain ways and the natural wirings that you have, but it doesn't matter who you are or how you're wired.

There are promises and expectations that God has for us that even our personality has to be submitted to.

That even those things have to fall in line to what God has asked us to do. I wish I had time to go through the entire story of Jacob, but what Jacob ultimately does is he relies so hard on his ability to deceive people. He learns to become a master of deception. And this is where I think our

personality tests in these things where they become weird is when we begin to use them to either justify our sin or we try to bolster our strengths, right? We just go, hey, know I'm not supposed to be a jerk and cuss people out, but it's just, I'm just wired this way. And we have to learn

that even those things have to be submitted to God because Jacob from the very beginning was a deceiver.

He had just learned to get ahead through deception. If I could go through and tell you the whole story of Jacob's life, it's a life of one deception after the other. Jacob ultimately for the promise to be fulfilled that he's gonna be the one where the spiritual blessing and the financial blessing from his family comes through him and not his brother, he's going to need two things. He's going to need his birthright from his brother that Esau is going to have to give him. And he needs the blessing from his dad. And if you know the story of Jacob, he does two incredible deceiving moments and he cons his brother out of his birthright for a bowl of bean soup, the worst trade in the history of the world.

His brother trades a multimillion dollar inheritance for one bowl of bean soup. And I wish I had time to preach this because it tells us the incredible depths that we will go to and settle for when we're tired and desperate enough. When you and I get desperate,

we will reach for things and settle for things that are so below God's standard for us.

But then Jacob also gets his dad. He deceives his dad through this whole process where he takes goat skin and he puts it on his arms. Remember his brother's hairy and he gets his dad to touch his arm and he thinks it's Esau and his dad actually blesses him. And in a matter of just a few years,

Jacob deceives his way into getting the birthright and the blessing and technically fulfilling the promise that was spoken over his life. But here friends is the catch. When you and I get something,

even a good thing, even a promise that God has spoken over our life, but we do it in a way that is outside of the order of which God has created it. And more importantly, the timing of which God has asked us to receive it in.

This is the most important lesson I think that you and I can ever learn. That thing that was supposed to be a blessing, it will become a massive burden. The exact same thing that happens to Jacob is what will happen to us. Yes, he receives the birthright and the blessing. He gets all of the things he was supposed to get,

but it leaves him with his brother wanting to kill him. And it leaves him in a place where he literally has to run for his life and flee. This friends is the John ten ten verse played out practically. It says that Jesus has come so that you and I can have life and life abundantly,

but there's an enemy that wants to kill, steal and destroy every single part of who we are. You have to understand that one of the greatest ways, one of the easiest ways that Satan will tempt you and I, it's not even always with some major sin thing, right? Oftentimes it's

a good thing that slowly becomes a God thing in our life. And what we're seeing in our culture play out right now, right? Abortion is this massive issue that's happening in the culture. But if you really break it down to what it really is,

this is a matter of not really trusting, not knowing identity and not trusting in the timing and provision of God. Because a baby, anytime we see it in scripture, it's a blessing. Even when it happens outside of wedlock, it's always a blessing in the Bible.

But the problem is when we take something that's supposed to be a blessing, we take it outside of the context for which God created it. We take it outside of that natural order and what become what was supposed to be a blessing now becomes the greatest burden that needs to be solved.

Friends, this is what happens when you and I try to through our own means, our own ability, our own trying to reach and grab things. We get them in our life and we go, dang, why doesn't this feel like I thought it was gonna feel?

I thought this was gonna do something more for me. This is the hardest part about you and I being human on this side of heaven because we have to learn even in the good things to trust and wait on the promises of God. Jacob needed somebody to tell him, Jacob, your name is not deceiver,

it's receiver. Like just wait and be patient and trust that God has a plan for your life that the Bible says is bigger and better than any plan that you could try to connive or conceive on your own. But when we try to help God and go, God, we'll just speed this up a little bit for you.

And we get ourselves in some of the worst positions. And Jacob runs and he runs to his uncle named Laban and Laban, in Laban Jacob meets his match of deception. Laban is one of the greatest deceivers we see in the Bible.

Again, if you are saying the Bible is boring, I'm telling you, it's not You're boring, okay? You need to read the Bible. Like the story of Laban and Jacob is better than any Desperate Housewives show out there, okay? Literally,

Jacob goes to his uncle Laban and he goes, hey, your daughter, I like her. I wanna marry her. She's really good looking. He's got two daughters, one that's not so good looking, one that's good looking. He's like, I'm gonna take the good looking one. And so Laban says, awesome, work for seven years and then you can have her. And if you know the story, it's a wild story. On the wedding night, he worked for seven years and goes, okay, awesome. You've earned my daughter's hand in marriage. So they throw a party. Laban gets Jacob so drunk like this is next level drinking.

That on the night of his wedding, he swaps the bride, puts his other not so good looking daughter in bed with him and Jacob wakes up the next morning having consummated the marriage with this girl going, What?

Weak eyed Leah? Like how'd you get here? And he realizes that Laban deceives him. This is what scripture tells us over and over and over and over again. In this life, if you sow deception, you will reap deception.

We always friends, we reap what we sow and what we reap will eventually catch up to us. And so Jacob has to work another seven years to get the wife that he wants. And eventually he goes, man, how do I get out of here? So Jacob does what Jacob always does. And he does one more con artist move and he cons his uncle out of a bunch of his money and his animals and then he goes on the run again.

And eventually Jacob gets tired of running. And this is where ultimately when we live through our own strength, into our own power, in our own way, leaning into our natural wiring, our natural personalities not submitted to God, this friends is where it will always leave us alone, by ourselves,

running from the people and the places that we want to be at most. That is a perfect picture of where the enemy would love for every single one of our lives to end up. And if we're not careful, it's where they will end up alone and broken and by yourself. And what do you do when you find yourself there?

My hope and my prayers that you would remember that God is a place that wants runners to come home. If you're here this morning and you got dragged here by your mom, I'm telling you, as somebody who was running from God for a long time,

my mom was the only reason that I ended up back in church. And luckily I walked into a place that said, hey, runners, you can come home here. There's a God that's actually pursuing you. Don't even have to run back to him because he's been running after you. And this is exactly what happens to Jacob. Jacob begins to realize, man, I've screwed all of this up.

I don't know what to do. I've tried this my own way. I've done this my own way. And it's left me broken, empty and alone.

So he starts to go, what do I do? But the beautiful message, again, we're starting to see a foreshadowing of the gospel of what Jesus would do for you and I, is that God meets him in the middle of that brokenness. God meets him in the middle of his desert. God meets him in the middle of his wandering

and he begins to wrestle him. This is the story I want us to see and kind of settle into. On Genesis 32,

here's where Jacob ends up. It says, During the night Jacob got up and he took his now, his two wives and he got two more servant wives. Like it's a whole another message series for another day. But he's got 11 sons and they crossed the Jabbok River

with them. Verse 23 says this, it says, After taking them to the other side, he sent over

All of his possessions. This left Jacob all alone in the camp. Friends, I hope you see that if you find yourself sitting here today feeling like you're all alone, I know it can be a hard place to be. But ironically for me in my life, this is the place where God will do some of his greatest work.

When we are alone, all the distraction, all the noise, all the chaos is gone. It's amazing how clear the voice of God becomes. Part of why we go so hard after this whole seats on the bus thing because if our youth ministry will see 300 kids give their life to Jesus in a year, two fifty of them happen at camp.

And part of it is because they get outside of their norms, get outside of their normal routine and they get away to a place that's quiet enough to hear the voice of God. Camp is a powerful thing. And for Jacob,

all alone is where God's going to meet him. And this next part again, it's kind of a funny story because a man comes and wrestles with him until the dawn began to break like just a random dude shows up and they just start wrestling until morning comes, right? Like it's wild. Verse 25,

it says, When the man saw that he would not win the match,

he touched Jacob's hip and he wrenched it out of its socket, okay? The guy that he's wrestling, we don't know who this is, we'll come to find out that it's God, but this man that he's wrestling with realizes like, oh, I'm gonna lose. And again, there's a whole another message in there. It's not like God actually was gonna lose like, oh, Jacob, you're so strong. Like this is like your dad wrestling with you as a four year old. Like he could smoke you at any moment and pin you, but he just lets you kind of go through this why to tire you out, to get you to the end of yourself, mostly so that we'll get our kids to go to bed. But what God is doing to Jacob

is he's taking this idea

of identity and who he thinks he is. And he's literally going to wrestle it to the very end. And he's going to wait until Jacob's tired enough and realize he's not giving up. And so he actually takes his hip and he breaks his hip and takes it out of the socket to injure him, which doesn't seem like the way that God would bless us. Yet we're going to see something here in a second. So he wretched out of its socket. And then the man said,

let me go for the sun is up. Like, let me go. And then Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. Verse 27, what is your name? The man asked. Again, I think it's funny that they wrestled all night and they didn't even have like the pleasantries of exchanging names, right? But they wrestle all night

and this man again, who we're gonna see in a second is God. He says, let me go. What are you doing? I broke your hip, just give up already.

And I think Jacob had been running for so long and been doing things his own way and leaning into his natural wirings and going, man, this has gotten me to this place where I'm absolutely broken. And I don't know what else to do.

And for some reason, I think Jacob understood that there was something to this guy. And so he just held on for dear life. And he's like, man, I'm not letting go. He's like, I'm not gonna let you go unless you bless me. Friends, this is the disposition of the heart that ultimately will receive

the things that we really want out of this life is when we finally become desperate enough to hold on to God with everything that we have. And he asked him, God asked him, what is your name? This is what's crazy to me in this story.

Again, Jacob has been pretending to be Esau for probably twenty five years now. He faked his dad into believing that it was him. He's been on the run doing things his own way. Theologians believe that by this point in this story where Jacob famously wrestles with God, he probably has not audibly spoken his name in twenty to twenty five years.

And again, is in this culture names mean everything. And he's not admitted publicly out loud verbally that this is who I am and just acknowledged his past and just said, you know what, up until this point, I've been a deceiver. And yet the really interesting part is before God will bless him, he makes him own

who he really is, or more importantly, who he thinks he is. And after this, here's what God does. It's what God wants to do for all of us. It's exactly what he does for Jacob. He says, your name is no longer Jacob. The man told him, from now on you will be called Israel

because you have fought with God and with men and you have won. Verse 29. It says, please tell me your name, Jacob says. And he says, why do you want to know my name? The man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.

So Jacob is doing everything he can to hold on to God and God says, what's your name? He finally says, name is Jacob. I'm not Esau, I'm just a deceiver. And in that moment, God says that's no longer going to be your name. And just like we see all over scripture,

when somebody has a powerful encounter with the living God, he gives them a new name, a new identity. Truly, it was actually the name that was always his. Jacob's name was never supposed to be deceiver. His parents gave him that name. His parents spoke that over him. And this friends again on Mother's Day,

it tells us the power of what you and I speak over our children. Our kids will live up to the standards that we create and they will also in the same vein, they will stoop down to the standards that we let them live to. Friends, we have to be really careful the things that we speak over our children.

Jacob was always born with the promise over his life. This is the chosen one. His name should have been the receiver. Yet his parents, because of a momentary decision that he made trying to get ahead, coming out of the womb, They named him deceiver and Jacob latched onto it and said, you know what, then I'll just be a deceiver.

And his whole life he's been deceiving until he finally gets to the end of himself and God says, man, your name was never supposed to be deceiver. You're always, you've always been my chosen one. And he gives him a new name, means it's Israel, which means one who's wrestled with God and one.

Friends, this is again the greatest foreshadowing of what Jesus wants to do to all of us. Every single person sitting in this room, all of us have different stories and different reasons and different areas that we grew up in and different homes that we come from that have all defined who sits here in this room today.

But you and I have to remember that there's only one person that gets to actually declare the name that is spoken over us. And it's the one who created us.

And you might feel like that this is your identity, that this is who you are. For some of you, are things that you've been trying to run from your whole life that you just feel like you can't get away from. Jesus wants to give you a new name. He wants to make you a brand new person.

And for some of us sitting here this morning, I think that this is something is pretty obvious for us that we need to go, you know what, I got to stop letting this be who I think I am. And I need to just have a moment before God

admit that this has been my struggle and this is where I've been. But I don't want to live here anymore. And I'm going to hold on to God with everything that I have. And in that promise, he will give you a new identity and begin to make you into a whole new person and friends. You don't have to live that way anymore.

The beautiful part is we see the end of Jacob's life is Jacob goes to see one of his sons that he thinks is dead. And instead of deceiving and conning his way to get there, God had told him not to leave the promised land. And we see Jacob as an old man learned.

I don't have to just run through life. I don't have to deceive my way through life because I believe in one that is leading my life and that he has provision for me. And we see Jacob in his end days, he stops and he prays and he says, Hey God, can I go see my son?

And God gives him permission. And you would think if there was anything that would justify Jacob just doing whatever it took, it would be going to see his son, a good thing.

But Jacob had learned that all things including my natural wiring, my natural tendencies, even those things I have to submit to the will and heart of God.

I believe that sitting in this room are people who have, man, we have found our identity in all types of things. Some of them we need to move away from and they're obvious, but I think for the majority of us in this room, this whole idea of getting our identity in something other than what God says our identity is supposed to be in, which is in him, which is as a son or daughter of the most high king, somebody that has a future and a destiny and a promise over their life.

I think most of us unintentionally have begun to reach for the things around us and those are the things that define us. And the reason that I would venture to say that I think is true about you is because I've learned recently, it's true about me.

I close by telling you a story, right? If you know, I came to Rock Point about five years ago. I was here for about three years and then I left because my wife went through a season of not listening to God's voice and so we moved back to San Diego. That was a joke, you can laugh. You're like, wait, And

so we moved back to San Diego

and the weird part is it was right in the middle of COVID, right? So churches were like, are we ever gonna meet again? Is this the end of church as we know it? And so churches weren't hiring and there's a whole cool providence of God story that I don't have time to go into. But through a random series of events,

I ended up getting a job

at a construction company doing sales for a guy in San Diego. He basically just said, hey man, look, I know you gotta move home. You've got all this family stuff going on, move your family home, bury your father-in-law, go through the process and literally I'll pay you and then we'll figure out what to do.

And I ended up in a position where I was doing high security like literally we were building top secret rooms, which I know nothing about. I was doing construction, which I know even less about.

And I was doing sales. And I was like, okay, is what it is. It's just a job. It's just like this job, but it's just a different job. It's just a different paycheck in a different company.

And so I left here and it was hard, one of the hardest decisions I've ever made, but I knew it's what I had to do. And so I leave and I go back to San Diego. And I was like, okay, this is gonna be different. Again, the whole world was different, right? COVID just was a bizarre thing in the beginning.

And the wildest part is if you had asked me before I left, Hey Daniel, is your identity wrapped up in being a pastor and getting on stage in front of people? I would say no way, man. It's just my occupation.

It's my calling. It's something I feel like God has wired me to do. He's gifted me to do. My top two strengths are communication and competition. So I like to beat everybody at everything. I'm like, this is just who I'm naturally wired to be, but it's not my identity. Yet the craziest part is a few weeks into this job,

walking into sitting in a literal cubicle and nobody knowing me, being really bad at my job. I started to borderline get depressed. And I was like, man, what is happening? And the truth is, is I had to come to grips with the fact

that though I would have told you my identity wasn't wrapped up in this. The moment it was taken away, man, I realized so much of who I was and the value that I brought this world was tied up in this. And the truth is, is there's parts of it that I had to just be honest and repent and go,

like the fact that when I'm out in public and I run into you guys that people come up and see me and my nine year old son tells me, dad, you're like the Walmart version of a celebrity. And I'm like, what does that even mean? You know, like cool. And yet I go from this Walmart celebrity

to my buddy Jeff that was here last week. He was planting a church and we started serving at his church plant. I was like, Hey Jeff, we just wanna serve man. Where do you want me? And I'm assuming he's like, Dude, do you just teach every other week with me? And he's like, Man, you know what we really need? We need sign holders.

I was like, Okay, holders? He's like, yeah, man, that would be awesome. And again, I'm not knocking sign holders. We need them if you do it, praise God for you, right? But truthfully, was like, no, that's beneath me. But there I was for weeks.

And I would stand there, I would hold a sign and I'd say, hey, welcome to Rhythm Church. We're glad you're here. And the whole time, truthfully in my heart, was like, God, I'm better than this. Haven't you wired me this way? Like, all of this is just gonna go away?

And I walked through literally the hardest few months of my life. And then I would come home to my wife and I would go, you did this to me. You took all of this from me. You made me leave Arizona. I gotta live back in California. And you took for me the only thing that I wanted to do. And truthfully,

I believe with everything in me that 90% of the reason that God moved us back there was to wrestle to the ground. The fact that my identity was becoming wrapped up in this thing and friends, pastors get into really weird situations when this becomes more

than just something that we do and this becomes a very identity of who we are. And I had to walk through that. I had to repent and move into a place of remembering who I am in spite of all of this stuff. And it was like, God, if I never preach another message,

I will rest in who you've created me to be. I tell you that story to say my fear is that a lot of you sitting in this room are in the exact same position that I was in. It might not be ministry, but it's your business.

It's your title at work. It's the house that you have. It's the paycheck that you make. It's the kids that you have. And though you might not instinctively say, yeah, my identity is wrapped up in it. Imagine what would happen if it all went away. It's always crazy to me that when a financial crisis hits,

CEOs don't just lose their business. A lot of them actually take their lives at the same time. Why? Because it wasn't just their business that went bankrupt. It was the very value that they had in the world that was lost the moment their business went away too.

This friends is why it is such a subtle foe to allow our identity to become wrapped up in something other than what God says that it should be in. Because it doesn't matter what it is, there's all the chance that we could lose it. And if we do, the consequences could be dire.

So my hope, my prayer this morning is that we would have an honest moment before God and that we would allow God to show us, reveal the places in our heart where we would admit what do you believe your name is? What do you think your identity is tied up in? And have a moment with God and just say, I'm Jacob.

This is who I am. And allow him to do what God always does. To work that thing out, give you a new name and set you on path to live a life of purpose. Understanding that all of this, man, this is all just gravy on top. But the actual meat and potatoes is who you are in Christ. So Father, I pray, God for every person

that's here this morning, that God that we would have a moment with you, just an honest moment of reflection, where we would be willing to be bold enough to say, hey, as much as it's a subtle thing, we've allowed this paycheck to define us. We've allowed

these kids to become more than something that's just our task and assignment. But it's like when they do something wrong, it means that like I'm a mistake and I did something wrong. And that father that we would be able to have a moment and just repent of that.

And that we would remember that the only person that gets to speak an identity over our lives is the one that created us. That Father in you, we are a chosen people. We are sanctified. We are holy. We are set apart. And if we don't accomplish another thing on this side of heaven,

you love us like crazy. You could not love us anymore. And the Lord from that place, we would begin to engage with our families, at our jobs, in our communities, and remember that everything that we have,

it all can be taken in a second. But the beautiful part is in you. We have everything that we need to be whole, to be secure, and to rest. Father, it's in the mighty name of Jesus that everybody pray. Amen and amen. Hey.