Following God, being one of God's people, part of God's
nation is not easy and and God never promised that it would be
easy to faithfully follow God, like faithfully.
To faithfully follow Jesus is is fraught with difficulty,
challenge, obstacles, even opposition, sometimes violent
and even lethal opposition. Jesus told his followers that
when he said things like in this world, you will have trouble,
but take heart, I've overcome the world.
Or when he said things like if you want to follow me, you need
to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.
Jacob was learning this as well, that following God, being part
of God's plan for this world is a challenge.
It's a struggle. He was promised even before his
birth that he would be the heir to the covenant that God had
made with Abraham. That even though he was the
younger of the brothers, that he would receive the promise that
he would rule over his older brother.
That he would be the one that would carry on this line, This
promise that God had made. That his descendants would one
day possess all of that land and that through his descendants,
all the nations of the world would be blessed.
So it's possible that Jacob, having grown up with this story
told to him by his mother, and then and then taking advantage
of his brother's short sightedness and his father's
blindness, gaining the birthright and the blessing that
Jacob thought, ah, it's going to be smooth sailing for me.
God's on my side. God's made these promises to me.
It's going to be great. It's going to be nice, it's
going to be wonderful. And then the bottom fell out of
it all and he spent 20 years of his life struggling and fighting
and battling just to survive. Running for his life from his
brother, arriving at his, his uncle Laban's house, his mom's
brother's house, falling in love with his daughter, his youngest
daughter. Laban cheated him there.
And when he was thought he was marrying Rachel, Laban sent Leah
in to be married instead. And then he ended up working a
total of 14 years for Laban to be married to the one daughter
he wanted to be married to, plus the other daughter that he
didn't want to be married to. On top of that, he continued to
work for Laban for 20 years. Jacob spent with Laban and it
was a struggle all of the way through.
This is part of the life that we have as followers of God.
As followers of Jesus, we are not promised a Rose Garden.
We are not promised an easy journey.
We are not promised a life free from struggle.
In fact, we are promised that if we make this decision, there's a
good chance we'll struggle more than we would if we weren't one
of God's followers. We have a challenge in our world
today that that that seems to be.
We want to insulate ourselves, our kids, our grandkids,
everyone around us from all of the pain and suffering that we
possibly can. I saw a report this week.
I I haven't fact checked it. It sounds reasonable to me.
So we're going for it's true, might not be true.
Fact Check me, you know, let me know on this, but I don't have
time to Fact Check everything I hear, particularly if I agree
with it. So why bother fact checking?
But it was a study done of playgrounds and there were
pictures of playgrounds from 2530 years ago.
You could die on those playgrounds.
Remember? We had a slide at my elementary
school on pavement. It was like 12 feet up, barely
any hand rails at all. A metal slide that on hot days
was like an iron cast iron skillet.
We loved it. We had swings that you could, we
jumped out of the swings at recess.
We had the board seats on them rather than the foldy seats.
And you could, you could, you could jump a long way on those.
That was on the gravel on the good days.
On the bad days it was mud and I didn't like the mud, so I didn't
jump out of the swings on the bad days.
Then they showed a picture of current playgrounds where where
nothing is taller than this and everything is plastic.
And the person was making this assertion.
And this is this is the part that I haven't fact checked, but
it seems reasonable. We're going to you, you see, if
you think it's reasonable as well.
He said, you know, obviously we don't want our children dying,
right? He said.
But psychologically, children do better going into adulthood if
they've had to deal with actual danger where they could get
hurt, not dead, but hurt. That that learning how to be
safe in a dangerous situation is an important skill for children
to have. And if they never face a
dangerous situation, they never learn that skill.
Learning how to overcome and work through an injury is an
important skill for children to have.
I never got injured badly on the playground.
Not sure how. I've been clumsy my whole life.
Never got injured bad. I did break my finger playing
touch football of all things. My uncle tagged me a little
harder than I was expecting and I landed on a finger and it
snapped and was in a cast for a little while on that.
Not a big injury, but an injury. My brother broke his foot.
My son has been to the emergency room.
He was in the emergency room more times in the first three
years of his life than I've ever been in the emergency room.
We got it. Suffering is a part of life and
to insulate ourselves or our children or our grandchildren
from all suffering doesn't protect us.
It it prevents us from developing the muscles, the
physical muscles, the emotional muscles, the mental and
spiritual muscles that grow when we have to work through and
persevere through adversity. This, I believe is part of the
reason why we get this story of Jacob and Leah and Rachel and
their long struggle. Their long struggle with Laban.
Jacob with Laban as his father-in-law, Rachel Aleo with
Laban as their parent who they described as having sold them
and then squandered what they got from it for them when he
sold them. I am confident that the life
they lived over that 20 year period was not the life that
they would have preferred, Not the life that they had planned,
certainly, and probably not the life that they had wanted.
But they struggled. It was a struggle all the way
through from the get go dealing with the lies and the deception
and the dishonesty. And then if we take Jacob at his
word, his father-in-law repeatedly changing his wages to
try to cheat him. Oh, you can, you can have all
the spotted sheep and goats that are born this year and those
will be yours and and then too many are born spotted.
So Laban changes. No, no, it's the street.
Well, no, it's the plane. No, it whatever it is just doing
everything he can to make life harder for Jacob.
And God did not stop Laban from doing that.
God did not stop Laban from lying.
God did not stop Laban from selling his daughters.
God did not stop Laban from trying to cheat Jacob.
God did not. God did not send down a
messenger to threaten Laban. God did not wrap Jacob, Rachel,
Alia, and bubble wrap to make sure they never got any bumps or
bruises as they went through life.
Instead, they had to struggle through.
And they did struggle through and they did the best that they
could in that struggle, including some, some things that
we now know are just silly. We'll eat the mandrakes and
that'll make me fertile and make my husband hopefully amorous
and, and and and then I'll have a baby.
It didn't work out. Didn't work out, Jacob.
Once Laban started messing with his wages, Jacob did all sorts
of crazy things. I, I don't know.
And I checked on this, I did Fact Check this, and this
apparently was a thing that it was believed that that what a, a
mother sheep or goat was looking at at the time of conception
affected what they gave birth to.
So. So Jacob got sticks and he put
stripe sticks out near the water in the place where the sheep and
the goats were breeding so that the female sheep would see
stripe sticks or then spotted sticks, all of these kinds of
crazy stuff. We know that there's no truth to
that whatsoever, but they were doing whatever they could to
work through the struggle. This is this is the reality that
we have. The long struggle of faith
requires patience and perseverance through pain.
Eugene Peterson, who did the the The Message translation of the
Bible, I don't know if you've ever come across that or not.
He was not a scholar. He was a pastor, an active
pastor with what he did through his professional career.
And he has talked in in his books about a long obedience in
a single direction, not giving up on a thing because it's hard,
not turning away because it's challenging, because we get
hurt, because we stumble, because we fall.
But a long obedience in a single direction.
And this is what Jacob and Rachel and Leah we're learning.
Following God a long time in a single direction doesn't mean
always doing the same thing. Jacob moved away from home, and
then he started a family, and then he's moving back to where
he left. It's not always doing the same
thing, but it's always following God wherever God is leading.
And sometimes that looks the same over a long period and
sometimes it looks different over a long period.
But it's not turning away to do something just because it's
easier. The Olympics are full of these
kinds of stories. And, and, and this is true
whether you're talking Summer Olympics or Winter Olympics.
I will confess upfront, I have not watched a single minute of
the Olympics. I don't know whether that makes
me unpatriotic or not, but just can't get my brain into the
Olympics this year. So I'm not there.
But I've been hearing stories and reading some of the stories.
And the stories behind the games are, I think, as interesting as
the games are themselves sometimes.
And you would the German ski jumper who's afraid of heights
and and, and receive psychological counselling and
training just so he can do what he's doing and winning gold
medals. There's perseverance in that
perseverance. There's AI believe it was a
cross country skier, a woman, I cannot remember which country
was from. She was from did a 10 kilometer
race with bruised ribs because she had been injured the week
before. I fell down the steps and stayed
in my bed for three days. I am.
I couldn't go 10 kilometers in cross country.
Skis of my life depended on it. Maybe if a bear was chasing me
now, he would catch me. Ilia Milanin, the American
figure skater who has been nothing but successful
throughout his entire career, I read, I believe had won fourteen
straight competitions before something happens and his final
round for his long program and ends up in 8th place and now
having to struggle with what comes next.
After all of that, the Olympic, the men's hockey team, I
understand they had two goals called back in the early rounds,
but they're still struggling on and persevering and not giving
up and not whining and not complaining, just continuing to
do the work. And for all of those folks on
the half pipes and the ski jumps and the slaloms and the the
moguls and all of that stuff, for every successful run we've
seen, they have fallen and wiped out 100 times, maybe more.
And when you're going downhill that fast, it's got to hurt.
Every single time you wipe out Lindsey Vonn breaking her leg,
you know there's pain. It was one of the guys I believe
is from England and men's skeleton who has broken his back
twice. The first time he broke his
back, it ended his Taekwondo career and so he went into the
much safer sport of skeleton. I don't get that.
He broke his back again and he's still racing.
He's still racing. I always wanted to play
professional sports. I was never willing to do what
it took to play professional sports.
Just not. And what, when I found out, I
was like, Oh yeah, no, not going to happen.
Not going to happen. I don't love it enough to put
that much time and energy into it.
Not going to happen. Wouldn't have mattered anyway.
But here's the thing. Everything good that's worth
doing is worth persevering through the pain and the
heartache and the struggle. And I'm convinced of this, that
everything that's worth doing will involve pain and heartache
and struggle, whether it's whether it's athletics at a high
level, whether it's friendship, marriage, raising children,
caring for elderly parents, these things, these things.
I'm seeing smiles back there at that one.
I, you know, these things are challenging and they're hard and
they're filled with pain and uncertainty and difficulty.
And we make as many mistakes, maybe probably more mistakes
than there are successes. Yeah.
We switch Olympics and go to the Summer Olympics.
My gosh, there's those girls that do the balance beam and
women that do the balance beam, how many times they fall and
smack their heads and bang their shins and, and hit their knees
working on those balance beams before they can do those amazing
things that they do up there. You, you can't get from the
beginning to the Olympics without pain, without suffering,
without heartache. Paul describes the Christian
life as preparing for a race, as athletics, or preparing for a
fight or wrestling match or a boxing match.
That's the metaphor, one of the metaphors that Paul uses to
describe life, to say it requires training, it requires
discipline, it requires sacrifice.
There will be heartache and pain and suffering and failure all
along the way. But the athletes do that for the
prize. And Paul says the prize that we
are striving for is so much greater than a trophy, so much
better than a medal. It is life forever with Jesus
and the Kingdom of God. Now we're only one week out of
the most boring Super Bowl in history, but I'm going to I'm
going to leave the Olympics and talk about football because my
favorite story of perseverance is Rudy Rudiger.
Anyone remember Rudy Rudiger that made a movie about him a
number of years ago. True story.
Rudy in the movie was played by Sam Wise Gangi, and and that was
interesting. He did a great job.
OK, so no one got that joke. That's all right.
Look it up later. It's funny.
Trust me. Trust me, Rudy was a a a small
kid with very little athletic ability from Indiana and he grew
up watching Notre Dame football and his dream was to play for
Notre Dame. And his coaches told him you
have no chance of playing for Notre Dame.
And he went to Notre Dame anyway.
And he discovered he had no chance of playing for Notre
Dame. He wasn't big enough.
He wasn't strong enough, and he wasn't fast enough.
And the simple fact was he wasn't smart enough to be a
student at Notre Dame and get good enough grades to be on the
team. And everyone around him was
telling me to quit, give up on this.
This is crazy. This is nuts.
This is stupid. This is dumb.
And Rudy refused. And what he managed to do was
get on the practice squad where he got the snot beat out of him
day in and day out by the starters.
And he worked and he worked and he worked and he suffered and he
worked. And he got a tutor to help him
with his school work so he can maintain his academics so he
could be at Notre Dame. And it's, it cost him.
There was sacrifice, there was suffering, there was pain, there
was injury, there was heartache all along the way.
But he did it until finally, and it was a beautiful thing.
In the last game of the of his time at Notre Dame College, the
coach put him in for one play and he got to make a tackle and
his dream came true. Perseverance.
It takes perseverance to achieve anything worth achieving, to
receive anything worth receiving, whether that's
whether that's a trophy, whether that's the opportunity to play
for your favorite team, whether it's a place in the Kingdom of
God, It requires perseverance, it requires patience, it
requires sacrifice through the pain.
One of the thing I love about Rudy's stories, though Rudy's
story is that it's also a cautionary tale and and further
inspirational. I don't know if you know what
happened to Rudy after college, but the bottom fell out of
Rudy's life. His dream was done.
What happens when your dream has been fulfilled at the age of
2223 and the bottom fell out of his life.
He got into debt, he lost everything he had.
He was homeless, living in his car, and then faith and God and
other sources of help intervened through faith and through God,
and he became a motivational speaker.
And it's done OK for himself. It's done well for himself.
I like that part of the story because one of the things it
tells me and I think tells us is that what our goal is matters.
What our dreams are matter. And and having the goal of
playing college football is a great goal.
That's a great. But one day that goal will
either be unfulfillable or it will be fulfilled and most of
your life will still be ahead of you.
And if we set our goal on a thing that that is that we, we
will never get and we know we'll never get, or if we get set our
focus and our goals and our hopes and our dreams on
something that we can get and achieve, you know, too early or
too soon, then what do we do with where does the motivation
come from after that? Where does the hope come from?
Where does the desire to, to persevere and to suffer and to
strive? This is one of the beautiful
things about having our sights set on Jesus.
Is in one respect we'll never achieve it, not in this life.
It will always be a struggle and and we can never achieve it on
our own. But our hope is in the end by
the grace of God, we will become like Jesus because we will see
him as he is and all of the pain and all of the heartache and all
of the suffering will have been worth it.
The other good thing in this whole thing is that through the
long struggle, God accommodates our weaknesses and our
frailties. God didn't condemn Rachel for
turning to Mandrake's to get fertile and pregnant.
God didn't condemn Jacob, say, oh, well, you know, he's, he
should just be praying to me instead of putting up those
stripe sticks. You know, we don't want him.
He let him do those things and God still blessed him.
And in the end God made it clear
to Jacob, you have a lot of sheep, not because you put up
sticks, but because I blessed you and I gave you the sheep and
I gave you the wealth. And Rachel, you have a baby, not
because you ate the mandrakes, but because I gave you a baby.
God accommodates our weaknesses. God works with and through us as
we are combinated. Rudy's weaknesses now.
We never became a starter for Notre Dame, but he learned so
much more, struggling with less, than he ever would have learned
had he been gifted with a lot of natural athletic ability and
talent. That work of struggling through,
of needing the help, of needing the extra, of needing the
support taught him more than easy success ever would have
taught him. God accommodates us.
God recognizes our weaknesses. God sees our weaknesses, our
frailties, whether it's physical, mental, emotional,
relational, psychological, whatever our weaknesses and
frailties are got to, I can work with that.
I can work with that. God looks at you, looks at me,
looks at us and says, you know, I, I can work with that.
I can do what what we need to do with that group of folks, with
other people. And it's not in spite of
sometimes, but even through those weaknesses that God makes
his presence and his power most known and most clear and most
felt. God has purpose for all of us in
this world, for us as a church, for us as individuals, for our
family, for our children, for our neighbors.
God has purpose. Realizing that purpose will
require struggle, patience, and perseverance through the pain.
God did not design this world, for whatever reason, to insulate
us from suffering or to insulate our children from suffering.
God has designed us to grow through suffering and through
pain, and we can expect that along the way.
And that's why Paul says we rejoice in our sufferings.
I haven't reached that point yet.
I'm just going to be honest. I have yet to go.
Oh yeah, more pain. Not even once.
Paul's beyond being that I can aspire to that we can aspire to
that at the time when the pain isn't too much, we can we can
acknowledge. OK, yes, I see.
I get it, God, that that I don't like the suffering, but the
suffering is good for me. So I'm not able to rejoice in my
suffering, but I'm at least willing to for you to make me
able to rejoice in my suffering. But one thing Paul and Jesus
make very clear is that trying to avoid suffering is no way to
follow Jesus. It's no way to live our lives.
It's no way to raise our kids. It's giving the opportunity and
the space and the freedom to venture, to try to fall, to
fail, to hurt, to suffer, to get back up and try and venture
again. This is this is the hope that we
have not a life free of pain and suffering, but Jesus with us
through the pain and suffering, God accommodating our
weaknesses. And in the end the prize that we
have is Jesus himself, in Jesus name, Amen.
Amen.