GENESIS | Week 7 | Full Service

amen. So I've got the sweetest little 10 year old boy named Braden who's just like, he's just awesome. He's a fun little kid. I'm glad that God gave him to me as a son. He's kind of introverted, which I'm not. He's much more wired like my wife. If we have a party at our house, even if it's like his birthday party, at some point he's gonna disappear. And you're just gonna go find him. He's sitting in his room, hanging out by himself. He just recharges by himself. He likes people, likes having a good time, but he just needs some time alone. And I've never met a kid that loves sugars and sweets as much as this little guy. Like he just, man, he's a carnivore for candy, right? Like you give him a bag of candy, this dude just has no ability to have any kind of self control. He'll leave it in his room at night, you wake up in the morning and it just looks a bomb went off in there and there's just shrapnel of the wrappers all over the place. And he's passed out on the bed and just had himself a good old time. And my wife's a bit of a tree hugger. She mostly eats like tree bark and licks dirt for her nutrients. But every now and then somehow some candy will sneak into our house and my wife will have to literally hide it from my son because he'll scale cupboards. Like he gets all kinds of creative to get to it. And the part that's really funny with him is most of the time we monitor his, you know, sugar intake because if it was left up to him, he would just eat it nonstop.

And it's really funny to watch him because

you can almost watch his body as he consumes it and it goes from his mouth into his stomach and his body begins to digest it and the sugar begins to hit him. He goes from like this quiet little introverted kid to just like this wild rambunctious animal running around the house just having a good old time.

There was one time when we were in San Diego where my wife and I weren't necessarily there to monitor his sugar intake and he got to experience what a full day of nothing but sweets and sugar and ice cream will produce in him. We started at my nephew's one year old birthday party and he got to eat some cake and ice cream and they gave little goodie bags to the kids of which he ate all of it in like thirty seconds. And

later that afternoon,

we took him to dinner with his grandparents. So we dropped him off and the grandparents took him and he convinced them that he wasn't really hungry. And so instead of dinner, he had a milkshake at dinner that we obviously didn't know about. Well, they then dropped him off at my mother in law's house and so she doesn't know anything.

She wants to spoil her grandkid. He convinces her to take him to Dairy Queen. So they go and get like a McFlurry or whatever it is, a blizzard at Dairy Queen. And this kid lived on nothing but sugar and he just was having the time of his life. He's like, this is what it's like to just have no parents and do whatever I want. And he then got to experience as he was dancing and having a good time in the living room, the byproducts of living on nothing but sugar.

And his body began to tell him, we've gotta get this stuff out of you because it's not good for you. And in the middle of the dance party, he turned and started projectile vomiting all over the living room. And the rest of the people in the room got to experience the cleanup of his mess.

The reason that I start there is it illustrates so perfectly exactly what we're gonna see in Genesis 25. That you and I, we all have these different appetites. And when it comes to food, it's easy to see visually.

When it comes to sweets, when it comes to candy, it's easy for our brains to connect the dots between that and the unfavorable finish of what it's like when we overindulge in them. But what I wanna do this morning is speak to you about your appetites. For some of you, your appetite is it's not food, it's not candy,

it's success. It's achievement. It's progress. It's something else in you that you desire and this is the danger of these things is they are in and of themselves not bad things.

They're actually God given things. They're really good things but because of the broken world we live in, we will be tempted to take even these good things, make them the God thing and they will become really really bad

gods to worship. The big idea of what we're gonna see in Genesis 25 is this, if you and I don't learn to control our appetite, our appetite will eventually control you. Genesis 25 is a story of caution.

It is a story of warning to you and I. The reason we should lean in this morning and remember the stories that are recorded that happened thousands of years ago is the Bible is not just a story of what happened, it is a story of what always happens. It is our humanity played out on paper.

All of us in this room have some type of appetite that if we're not careful, if it gets inflamed, if it grows beyond the scope upon which it is supposed to be, it has the very possibility of leading us to a place that we don't want to end up.

The question is is what are the appetites that you struggle with? Well some of the appetites that you might struggle with, for some of you it could be progress.

Again progress is a great thing. We serve a God that wants us to see progress, to see humans get better, to watch the ball get pushed forward, but take it outside of the context for which God created it and it becomes a bad thing. Some of us in this room, our appetite that we struggle with is responsibility.

We just want more and more and more of it. We want more responsibility at work. We want more responsibility at the office, with home, that it can become a danger for us. Respect,

that some of us desire this idea of being respected. It is this appetite in us that again in and of itself is not a bad thing. For others your appetite could be success.

You just want to achieve and go after the next thing and build a big kingdom and go after and build a business and it's not a bad thing. You just gotta be careful not to let it become a God's thing.

For some of us, our comfort is the greatest thing that we go after, a life of luxury, a life of no suffering. For others, the appetite you might struggle with, possessions.

You just want to have more and more things and you convince yourself that the next house, the next car, the next purse, the next iPhone 12.5 that does the same thing as the iPhone 12 does, maybe just maybe it will finally be the thing that begins to fill the void that you feel. For some of us, it's fame,

right? And this is kind of a weird one but if we're honest, if we could just hit a button and become really famous, there's something in us that desires it. That's why my son refers to me as the Walmart Walmart version of a celebrity. He's like, Dad, you're like the Walmart version of a celebrity. I'm like, Thanks son, I appreciate that.

For some of us, it's achievement. Some of you, your greatest area of temptation is the brilliance that God has given you. The ability to build something great. Again, if not leverage for the kingdom of God, it can if it gets inflamed and grows out of control, it can become the thing that could be your downfall.

The last one that I want us to look at is this idea of being envied. If we're honest, there is times in our lives that we want people to look at us and go, dang, how did he get her?

Look at that car that he drives, right? The Barrett Jackson car show would not be a thing if we weren't trying to impress our neighbors with the cool $100,000 car that sits in our garage and we don't ever drive very often. Now don't hear what I'm not saying. Possessions are not bad. It is okay for us to have possessions.

The danger of it is when our possessions begin to have us. If you're not careful, possessions will be much more than things you have and they will become an identity of who you are. And if that's you and you're beginning to fall into that trap, I'm telling you, you are just a few steps away of that appetite.

You no longer being able to control it and it now controlling you.

And it will lead you down some paths that you'll go, man, how did I get here? Here's what I want us to see before we look at Genesis 25 about these appetites. There's a couple of points that I want you to know about them. This is what makes them dangerous is because God gave them to us. God created them.

But in Genesis three, as we've seen, because we live in a fallen and broken world, sin has destroyed them, sin has distorted them. It has taken these things that by themselves aren't bad, but it's made them into something that can become bad if we're not careful. If we don't control them,

it is possible that they can learn to control us. This is the other thing we have to know about these appetites. They are never fully and finally satisfied. Your appetite will tell you this will be the last one. Just do this one and then you'll be good. But the truth is that these appetites are never completely satiated.

I'll prove it to you. Some of you have done this at Thanksgiving where you went back for seconds and thirds and then forced yourself to eat dessert and you had to like undo your belt, sit on the couch and lay there, you're like, I'm gonna die. I think I'm gonna throw up. Like you leave the Brazilian steakhouse and you've got the full blown meat sweats, you know what I'm talking about? Like I just, I can't believe I did that to myself. And you're convinced I'm never gonna eat food again.

And then what happens? Three hours later you're standing in front of the fridge wondering where the leftovers are. Why? Because your appetite might convince you that this will be the one that will completely satisfy you but the truth is is it's a lie. They will never completely satisfy you. They can't satisfy you.

Post Genesis three and the fall of the Garden of Eden, you and I all have a hole inside of us. We have this eternity in our hearts that things in this world can only temporarily touch. They can never fully and completely satisfy them. Here's the last one before we get into Genesis 25.

These appetites will always whisper now, never later. They will always demand now. You need this now, you deserve this today. Don't worry about what it costs you down the road, lean into the here and now.

Here's the danger of a message like this. For some of you, we're gonna look at the story of Jacob and Esau. You've heard this story.

It's really easy to dismiss this message and to downplay the appetites in our life because they're not the big glaring ones that are out there like other people struggle with. And what we're walking through right now, it feels very manageable. It feels like it isn't that big of a deal.

Genesis 25 will prove to us if we are not intentional to control the appetites that we struggle with, given enough time, the right circumstances and the right level of desperation, these appetites have the power to control us.

Your future, your destiny, where God wants to take you, these appetites not only have the ability to alter and effect, they have the ability to completely erase and remove the destiny of God

on your life. Let me set up what we're gonna see in Genesis 25 if you're just joining us. The story in the book of Genesis is a really important one. It is the Hebrew people origin story. It is God telling them where they came from. It's God telling you and I where we come from.

It's where we come from. A God that made us. A God that didn't just randomly put people here. That He intentionally built you and I. And He built us to have relationship with us. We were supposed to be in paradise with Him forever in the Garden of Eden. But sin entered the world in Genesis two and God in His grace and His love and His mercy, He kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden so that they wouldn't live forever in their new broken state.

And then what God began to do in Genesis three is He started to initiate the greatest rescue mission that we've ever seen. And it started with a man named Abraham who was struggling with infertility that Brent looked at last week and God told Abraham,

through you I'm gonna birth a nation. It's a weird promise to an old man that has no kids. But he tells him, through you if you trust me, if you're faithful to me, I will birth a nation. Eventually a guy named Jesus will come.

Abraham has a son named Isaac. And the bible doesn't tell us a ton about Isaac. We know some basic things. But Isaac eventually lot know that people. And so

ugliest baby in the history of the world. Know He comes out red and hairy like Chewbacca. Like now that is an ugly baby.

And Esau is born first and right behind him is his twin brother Jacob. The Bible tells us he is literally holding onto his brother's heel. It is a picture of a brother who's trying to get ahead, who's trying to manipulate his way into being the first out of the womb. Why? It means nothing for us in our context,

But in this culture being the firstborn son though it was just a few seconds before the other, it meant everything to them. As the firstborn son, Esau would have been the son of promise. He would have been the son of destiny.

He would have been given what's called a birthright and this birthright was an irrevocable right that was his as the firstborn son. It offered him double the inheritance of his other siblings which in today's economy was probably worth multi millions of dollars. These were wealthy families we're talking about.

It gave him what all siblings and big families really want, which is the power over your other siblings. He would have been the judge and ruler of the family as the firstborn. And there was also this thing called the blessing

that was to flow through him, this provision of God, the hand of God would be on him and his kids because he was the firstborn son. Esau was a son of destiny. He was a son that was born with royalty and his brother Jacob was one right behind him. This is the story that sets up Genesis 25 that begins in verse 27.

It says, As these boys grew up Esau became a skillful hunter. He was an outdoorsman but Jacob had a quiet temperament preferring to stay at home. Isaac loved Esau because he enjoyed eating the wild game that Esau brought home but Rebecca loved Jacob. These boys are twins but that is the only thing they have in common.

Esau is a man's man. He's wrestling alligators and lions and tigers and bears. He's just out hunting. His little brother Jacob, his idea of hunting is going to the mall and hunting for a deal. You know what I mean? Like he's an indoor kind of guy. And the dad likes Esau

and the mom likes Jacob. What we're seeing is a family that has massive dysfunction. Parents that are showing preferential treatment to their kids. And if you thought your family was the only one with dysfunction, welcome to the Bible.

Dysfunction inside of our families is something that is just part of the human experience. What we're seeing are two boys who yes are technically twins, but that is the only thing they have in common. They are wildly different.

And Jacob, his whole life has been trying to connive and manipulate his way into getting what was never his. He was trying to take something that was only reserved for the firstborn son. The story continues

in verse 29. It says, One day when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau arrived home from the wilderness exhausted and hungry. Esau says to Jacob, I'm starved. Give me some of that red stew. This is how Esau got his other name Edom which means red.

So Esau is out hunting all day and he's unsuccessful and he's hungry. He comes home and his brother is making some type of bean or lentil stew. It's not the most appetizing thing in the world. It's not like he's cooking filet mignon. He's making bean soup.

But Esau is so hungry, he's so famished, he's so desperate, He asks his brother, can I just have a bowl of soup? Now again, for this story to make sense, if you come from an only child family, I've gotta give you some context of what happens when you have siblings.

There is a natural sibling rivalry that takes place when you have a brother or sister, especially when you're the older brother and you've got little brothers, okay? I am the older brother in my family and I've got two little brothers.

There was never a moment in my life that I really needed anything from these knuckleheads except for to leave me alone. That's the only thing I needed from them, right? They followed me around everywhere. They were kind of a nuisance but as the older brother, there weren't many moments that I needed them.

But in this story, on this day, the older brother needs something from the little brother. This is if you're the younger sibling in your family dynamic is something that you better pay attention to. There will come moments in your relationship with your older siblings where they're gonna need something from you

and you better know what you want when those circumstances come up. If you haven't pre planted and thought through it ahead of time, you've missed your shot. Jacob knew, he knew if this moment comes, I'm going for the jugular. It's not often that my brother needs something from me,

but if he does and he asks me for something as simple as a bowl of bean stew, I know I've got a shot to get the thing that I really want. What we're about to see unfold, and I know a lot of us know this story, what we're about to see is the worst trade in the history of the world.

This is the equivalent of you stubbing your toe, walking in the house and asking your little brother for a band aid and goes, Yeah, foe, I got you. Just give me your car first. Like my car, I just need a band aid, right? Like we would laugh it off. Nothing would ever go any further. Yet somehow in this day,

Esau is so hungry, he entertained a trade he never should have entertained. It tells me the danger of desperation. It tells me that if we don't control our appetites friends, eventually maybe just maybe our appetites can control us. Verse 31,

Jacob says, All right. I think in the original translation it actually says, all right sucker, but they took that out just so nobody was offended. Jacob says, all right sucker, I got you, betrayed me your rights as the firstborn son. He says, want a bowl of bean soup. It's okay, give me your rights as the firstborn son.

You mean my multi million dollar inheritance, that's what you want for a bowl of bean soup? And again, who would make a trade like this? Who would trade their inheritance for a bowl of bean soup? The danger is is you might, I might. We see this happen every day.

Some of you grew up in a home where your parents made this exchange and you live from the byproducts of their choices. A parent that wasn't willing to walk away from the bottle, that wasn't willing to walk away from he or she who's no longer even in their lives and they gave up the opportunity to raise you for a pill,

for a drug, to build a business? They gave up that for this?

Now here's the thing that's so easy to look at Genesis 25 and go, Oh, that's such a silly story of what happened. Yet I could tell you probably 15 people that I know personally who no longer have their platform, who no longer have their influence, who no longer have their voice and their witness into the world, not because of the school they went to or didn't go to.

Not because of the grade point average they got. Not because of their theological positions of when it comes to predestination.

But they lost their ability to stand up here with a platform and to witness to the world because of an appetite that they didn't tell anybody about that grew out of control and eventually it began to control them. You and I will be tempted to do the exact same thing that Esau does

because it's part of our human experience. If we don't learn to control our appetites and we wait until the day that we are so hungry and so desperate that our appetites begin to control us, it's almost too late. Right now where you are, when you think it's insignificant,

when you think it doesn't make any sense or there's no way this could get bigger, it's just an innocent conversation with an old friend on Facebook. It's just an innocent exchange with a coworker. It's just a website. It's just a habit. It's not a full like addiction yet I can control this.

You are right now in the makings of an appetite that eventually will lead you to a path where you will go, I never in a million years could have imagined it cost me this. I got a phone call two nights ago of a guy that I know that was marked to take over one of the largest churches in the country,

found out this week that he'd been having an affair with somebody on his staff for the last six months. I'm telling you friends, the stakes could not be higher. You get desperate enough, you get hungry enough, you and I are capable of anything. Esau responds to his brother's ridiculous proposal, his outlandish proposal

of beans for his rights as the firstborn son. And in verse 32, Esau's response tells us everything. He says, Look, I'm dying of starvation. What good is my birthright to me now?

Way that he justifies it and tells himself rationalized to rationalize his way into this decision, which again, this is a theme of the book of Genesis. He says, you know what? Dad's not gonna die for sixty years. What good is a birthright to me now when I can't do anything with it?

And this is the problem when you and I forget the destiny that is on our life. When we forget the purpose that we've been born with. We will begin to reach for the things right around us to fill the voids that we feel. We will begin to overvalue the immediate and undervalue the ultimate. He goes, what's the point?

I feel like I'm going to die. Now here's what's crazy, he's convinced that he's starving to death. Yet he walked into the kitchen in his own power. He's only got an afternoon without food. Do you know how long you and I can survive without food and water? They say over a week you can make it without any food or water.

You know how long you can go if you have water but no food? They say most likely up to three months. It's a little bit morally unethical to study people starving themselves to death so we don't have a ton of data around it.

But they've watched people in prison do hunger strikes and they are able to make it over two months before their body starts to shut down as long as they have access to water. There's no way Esau's actually starving. He's not actually going to die. So what's happening to him? What is he experiencing that's

getting him to say, I'm gonna die.

This thing has become so huge that there's nothing that I won't give to satisfy it. This is what psychiatrists refer to as a thing called impact bias. What Esau is experiencing is the same thing that will happen to you and I. Impact bias is when we take an appetite that starts to get inflamed and it grows out of control, it will eventually take something that is small, is something that is not that big of a deal and it will become a huge

deal. It will become one of the only things that we can focus on. This is what marketers know about you and I. Why do you think Apple is able to sell the same phone to us that does the exact same thing? They just put a new number on it and we walk in droves to buy the dang thing.

Because they know they'll convince you that this is what you need and then you tell yourself, I do need this. So we'll get you into the car dealership that says, you know what? I do need this car. My other car's a piece of junk, the miles per gallon, this thing is gonna be amazing. My friends are gonna be impressed with it. Everybody's gonna love it. The new car smell, this is awesome, I have to have it. This isn't a want, this is a need, right? And then you're at the car dealership, there's a bit of pressure, you make the purchase, you get home

and then your brain goes back to a normal state, the impact bias wears off and what happens? You look down and you're like, wait, I signed for ninety seven months of this payment? 27% interest? I didn't know that was a thing. And what happens? We begin to experience what's called buyer's remorse.

And then you walk into the dealership and you see the big sign that says, Hey, we got you sucker. There refund is policy. You bought it thinking that it was the ultimate when the truth is all it ever was gonna do is give you some temporary satisfaction.

This is why our appetite's out of control gets so dangerous because impact bias is a neurological phenomenon that makes them something way bigger that convinces you after an afternoon of not eating that you're gonna die. And impact bias leads to this other thing called focalism.

And focalism gets you to a point where that's the only thing you can focus on. That is the only thing that you can see. It blurs out every other option and it makes this thing the only thing that you can see. If you've ever talked to an addict that has gone through the process

of recovery, going through the consequences that their decisions have made and they face those consequences, they've gotten to a place of sobriety, they've fought to sober

and then they relapse and they go back to the very same thing that got them there in the first place. We sit back and we go, that is crazy. Why would they do that? And you have a conversation with them and they'll tell you, I couldn't see anything else. It was like it consumed me. It was the only thing that I could see.

It is what is happening in your brain. It's part of the broken experience we live in as humans now but it's not just addicts that experience this, it's you and I as well. It is amazing what we will give up for some temporary, instant gratification. Esau, the proposal on the table, his birthright, multimillion

dollar inheritance for one bowl of bean stew. Who would make that trade? Esau proves that all of us will do it. And here's what verse 33 says.

Jacob says, Before I give it to you, I want some guarantees, right? He says, First, I want you to swear that your birthright is mine. So Esau swore an oath thereby selling all of his rights as the firstborn to his grandfather or to his brother Jacob.

This is the part of the story. If there was a part in this story that I could like time travel and show up to Esau and have a conversation with him. This is the moment that I wish I could show up to him. I wish I could show up to him and tell him, Esau, you don't understand, you don't know what I know.

Because I've read the whole book of Genesis. I know what God is doing in the Old Testament. I know that the bigger story that God is writing that is going to fulfill in the New Testament, but right now all you see is the day to day existence that seems pretty boring. It seems like it's not that exciting.

And this is the challenge when we're people who think in seconds and minutes and hours and maybe at best days, but we serve a God who's thinking about weeks and months and years and decades and generations.

We begin to undervalue what it is that God will do in our life. You sitting in this room, it's easy for you to forget that God is doing something powerful through you. It's why young people, your grandparents are telling you, I wish I could see I wish you could see me the way that I see you. I wish you could see yourself how I see you. If I could go back now and know what I know now, I would do things differently. If I could show up to this moment, would tell Esau, Esau here's what you don't know.

There's a rescue mission at work. God through your life. He's about to give you 12 sons. I know you can't see it now because you're not even married. But pretty soon you're gonna be married and you're gonna have 12 sons.

And in the future, we're gonna refer to them as the 12 tribes of Israel. And those sons are gonna have families. And those families together are gonna go through a really hard season. And eventually they'll end up in Egypt. And they'll be slaves to this guy named Pharaoh.

And they will be a slave nation, but they'll be a powerful nation nonetheless.

And eventually Esau, I know you can't see it today, But what God will do to those people, for those people is he'll rise up a savior for them. His name's Moses. He's gonna be the person that rescues them. And I know the name Moses is weird, but just stay with me.

He's gonna take this guy Moses who's a shepherd. He's gonna be out in the wilderness. There's gonna be a bush that catches fire, but it doesn't like burn up. But it's on fire. It's not the point. Stay with me. He's gonna take Moses. And he's gonna tell Moses, Moses, I know you don't know who I am.

But I'm about to use you to save these people. And Esau, you know how he's gonna introduce himself to Moses? He's gonna tell them I'm the God of Abraham. I'm the God of Isaac. I'm the God of Esau.

But if you eat this bowl of bean soup what will be recorded in history for the rest of the world is that he'll say that he's the God of Abraham and Isaac and your little brother Jacob. In two thousand years from this day Esau,

what's gonna happen is there's gonna be this guy named Jesus and he's gonna walk this earth and people aren't gonna get it in the beginning but eventually they will realize this is him. This is the Messiah. This is the Yahweh. This is the great I am. This is the savior that we've waited for. And he's gonna befriend a guy named Matthew. He's a tax collector. There's taxes in the future. It's terrible, but just stick with me.

He says, and Matthew's gonna record the life of Jesus so everybody around the world will know about him. And Matthew's gonna write a book. It's not really a book. It's a letter that they call a book, but again, it's not the point. He's gonna write a book

and he's gonna start that book and it's gonna say, God started a nation with a man named Abraham. And Abraham had a son named Isaac. And Isaac had a son named Jacob.

If you sell this birthright for this bowl of bean soup right now, the rest of the world won't even really know who you are except they'll preach your story as a word of caution for the rest of the world. Friends, this is the danger when we think that God is doing something small through our life.

When we begin to think that God is just missing us somehow, that he's not doing something powerful through our lives. If we could sit in the position of eternity and see what God is doing, we would stop settling for the ordinary mundane things that we're giving away our blessings for.

The most tragic part of this story is I don't get to travel back and have this conversation with Esau And I won't get to have this conversation with you in your moment of weakness either. And you won't get to have it with me and mine.

But if we can begin to believe that God is actually doing something through us that is significant, that God is actually going to use our life to change cycles in our family line. That my great grandkids, I don't know them now,

but they're going to know the legacy that has come forth through our family through my obedience. It makes it much easier to begin to say no to things that I'm tempted with today. But if I forget that God is writing a legacy through me, if you forget that God is writing a legacy through you,

you will reach for the things in this world and you will settle for just instant gratification. The saddest verse to me in this whole thing is the very next verse where it says, Esau traded his birthright, he gets a bowl of bean soup, he eats it.

He gets up from the table and after enjoying something for a few moments, he despises his birthright. The very thing that was supposed to be the greatest blessing for Esau was now something that just caused bitterness in him.

There's a lot of us sitting in church today who are really bitter at God. And the truth is, is a lot of times we blame God, but the truth is the decisions were ours. The mistakes were ours. The consequences of those decisions sometimes we don't even know the full ramifications of.

And I know right now for you, you're just going, ah, this is a message for somebody else. I'm telling you it's not. If you don't control your appetite, your appetites have the ability to eventually control you. The danger of your appetite is it only knows one word, it's more.

Your appetites only know one place on your calendar, it's now. And if you're not careful and you don't learn to control your appetite eventually, it could lead you into a spot where the very plan of God in your life is removed and all that our lives will become is a cautionary tale to the people that come after us.

I don't want to just accidentally be used by God. I don't wanna live a life where people look and go, Oh yeah, just don't do what grandpa did. Don't just do what your dad did. I wanna be a person that goes, God, I wanna leverage everything I have to build your kingdom.

I did a funeral this week for a 19 year old man who had no idea his life was gonna be cut short. None of us are promised tomorrow. What are you doing with the gift of life that you've been given today? What are you settling for and giving up today that's gonna cost you tomorrow?

The question becomes what do we do? Awesome. We sit here, we have these appetites, we're humans, it's part of the tension we live in, what do we do? I think what we begin to do is kind of a two step process.

How do we win the war of controlling our appetites? The first thing is we have to learn to reframe them. We have to begin to see them in scope of what we want most. What do you want most?

Where do you want your life to end up? Most of us are just meandering through life. We're just wandering through life. And here's the truth, you are not gonna accidentally just end up at the altar pure if you're dating today. You're not just gonna accidentally end up with a marriage that honors God, with kids that honor God, with a business that honors God. You are going to have to intentionally work at it. Bible says in the book of Proverbs that without vision we perish. Without a clear picture of where we're going,

without a clear picture of an end destination that we want to work towards, we will settle for what's right in front of us. So what's your vision? What's your vision for your marriage?

What's the vision for your kids? What's the vision for your finances? What's the vision for your church? What's the vision for your family?

Some of us this week just need to start with a blank piece of paper and say in five years I want my marriage to look like this, my kids to look like this, my finances to look like this and begin to get a picture of what you want most.

And maybe just maybe it will give you the willpower to begin to reframe the things you want right now and say, if they don't serve me getting to where I want to be eventually, I'm not settling for them today. As we learn to reframe our appetite, maybe just maybe we will learn to refrain from our appetites.

Here's the beauty for those of us in this room who've placed our faith in Jesus, who have surrendered the reigns of our life to the Messiah, who have given our hearts to Jesus, you're not in this fight alone.

You don't have to do this through your own willpower. You don't have to suffer in silence and white knuckle your way to heaven. The Bible says that you and I have been given the same spirit that rose Jesus from the grave alive and active in us. Jesus told his disciples before

you go into this world and make disciples, first wait for the helper. Wait till the Holy Spirit comes because you can't do this on your own. Here's the hard part. Here's the tension of being a human on this side of eternity. We seem to have a soul that is at conflict with itself.

It is fighting against the things that we want most and the things we want right now. Paul tells us this in Galatians chapter five about this tension. He says, So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves.

The sinful nature inside of all of us, it wants to do evil. It's just the opposite of what the spirit wants. And the spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires.

These two forces are constantly fighting each other. So you are not free to carry out your own good intentions. What Paul says in Galatians very clearly is the same thing he references in Romans chapter seven where he says, why does it seem like inside of me are these two warring souls?

One that makes me do the things that I don't wanna do and then the things that I wanna do, I don't do those things. What a wretched person that I must be. He talks about the duality of our humanity.

This goes back to the Cherokee tradition where there's a story where they talk about us having two wolves inside of us that are conflicting and fighting against each other. And there's a famous story that's passed down in the Cherokee tradition of a little boy

who goes to his grandpa one day and he says, grandpa, I don't know what to do. It seems like these two wolves just keep attacking me. One wants to do good. One wants to pursue righteousness and holiness and faithfulness and mercy and self control and all the fruits of the Holy Spirit. But this other one,

man, it wants everything that this world has to offer. It just wants everything that's in this world. It wants it now, it wants it today, it wants more, what do I do? And the grandpa tells him that inside of all of us there are two competing wolves that are fighting. And the little boy asked him which one will win.

And the grandpa tells him the one that you feed will ultimately be the one that wins. My question to all of us this morning is a simple one. What is your bowl of bean stew? What is the thing right now that you know that if God was here sitting with you one on one, he would point to this one thing.

It might not even be illegal or immoral, but you know right now if everybody in this room knew about it, you would be ashamed. Don't let that condemnation keep you there. Don't let the judgment of what you think other people will think stop you from being free from it.

What is your bowl of beans too? The thing that you know, that it might not be that big of a deal today. It might just be a website today, but maybe just maybe if this thing keeps growing. I can't see it now. I don't see how it's gonna progress to that. But God, would you give us the foresight to see this for what it is.

A king cobra that is only designed to kill. Something that will seek every part of us and destroy it. What wolf are you feeding? Every one of you got one of these on your way in this morning. This is the good news for those of us who are in Christ. The reason we do communion,

it's not just a religious ritual we go through. It's not a box that we check. It is the very source of the power that we've been given for those of us who are in Christ. Jesus telling his disciples on this side of heaven, you're gonna have appetites you're gonna have to wage war with.

You're gonna have things that are gonna pull you away from the plan of God for your life. But understand you're not doing this alone. You have my spirit in you because tomorrow when he gathered his disciples, he told them tomorrow my body will be broken for you. My body will be nailed to a tree so that you can live free.

My body will be bruised and beaten beyond belief so that you are no longer a slave to sin. And he told his disciples to take this bread, to do this and remember the body that is broken for you. And the disciples took and they ate.

And he took a cup, it was a cup of wine and it freaked all the Baptists out, but that's another sermon for another day. And he told them, I want you to take this cup and I want you to remember the blood that will be spilled tomorrow because the penalty of sin will be paid for on the cross,

but also the power of sin will be broken tomorrow. You don't have to live to being a slave to sin any longer because of the blood of Christ. He told the disciples to take this, to drink it and remember the blood that was spilled for them.

I say all of this today to tell you, I hope God can give you a picture of where your life is gonna end up. I hope you can begin to look at your life from the end of your life to today and begin to believe that maybe just maybe God is writing a bigger story through you than you could ever even imagine.

And that it would give you the power and the ability through the help of the Holy Spirit to control the appetites that are in all of us. And we don't have to end up being people who are just controlled by our appetites, losing our platforms, losing our influence, losing our legs to stand on with our family.

I hope and my prayers that you would be bold enough and audacious enough to be honest with God, admit where you are and begin the process of repenting. So father, I ask God with everybody's eyes closed and heads bowed in this place,

Lord, that we would just have an honest moment with you. Lord, it's so easy in the busyness of life to just make justifications and excuses for the things that we're struggling with. And God for some of us, they're really good things. They aren't these really big, bad, hairy sins that we often think about.

They're good things that you've placed in us for us to steward and for us to manage. But Lord, we can't make those our God. That can't be the worship, the altar that we worship at. So Father, right now we put you back in right standing in our life. We acknowledge you as the Lord and savior of our life.

For those of us who are in here this morning, who have never surrendered our hearts to you, would we start there? Would we stop trying to white knuckle it ourselves and to see that Jesus was the fulfillment of the greatest rescue mission that the world has ever seen to restore humanity back to God.

Not through our own power, not through our ability, but through what Jesus did on the cross. And that we would accept your free gift of salvation that we just receive. We don't work for, we don't achieve it. It is a moment of grace that you give it to us. So father we ask

that you give us the courage and the boldness to walk out of this room, believe this gospel truth enough to actually take you at your word and live it out. Jesus, we need you. Holy Spirit, we need you. It is in the mighty name of Jesus that all God's people said. Amen and amen. Thanks for joining us online this weekend.

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