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Hey, this is U.S. olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull. And I'm U.S. paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC, Equal Housing Lender and NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply. Hey, this is Steven Furtick. I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast. I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life. Enjoy the message. I want to go back to Jacob. Jacob is going to be our Valentine's date. We're going to learn some lessons about life and love and loneliness from Jacob. We'll pick up in Genesis 32:19, Genesis 32:19. He also instructed the second, the third, and all the others who followed the herds. You are to say the same thing to Esau when you meet him. And be sure to say, your servant Jacob is coming behind us. For he thought, I will pacify him with these gifts I am sending on ahead. With these gifts I am sending on ahead. Later, when I see him, perhaps he will receive me. So Jacob's gifts went on ahead of him, but he himself spent the night in the camp. That night, Jacob got up and took his two wives. Touch somebody say, don't get any ideas. His two female servants and his eleven sons. And crossed the ford of the jabbok. And crossed the ford of the jabbok. After he had sent them all across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. I want to speak to you today on the subject hidden issues. Hidden issues. I pray that the Spirit of God would help make application to the truth in this text. Let's pray to that end. Father, I lift up every need before you today and ask that you administer. Do surgery. Provide knowledge, wisdom, insight, conviction. Yes, God. Even comfort and encouragement to every heart so that we may leave this place very different and very assured that you are with us and for us in all we do. In Jesus. Name. Everybody who loves Jesus and who wants to hear a little sermon about Jacob shouted Amen. Before you take your seat, if you're married, turn to your spouse and say, this counts as our date. We got you a concert, a feast on the word of God. What more could you want? Amen. Thank you, worship team. Have you guys been enjoying the Hearers in Heaven album? Well, praise the Lord. I hope so. There's blood and sweat, tears, joy in those songs. Listen to them and crank them up. Roll up beside somebody at a red light, turn it up loud, and say, this is my church. Well, it's the first weekend of our next decade. How about that? Your response is not indicative of the gravity of this occasion. It is the first weekend of. Of our second decade as a church. To celebrate. I want to talk about your issues. Touch your neighbor and say you have issues. They're not surprised by that. Depending on your proximity, you could continue that conversation in great detail, depending on how you see them. It's an interesting season in America because, well, we're in a season where almost every three days there are people on stages debating about issues. Have you been watching the debates? No, Stacy, you don't watch Them. I don't understand why you wouldn't watch them. They're fascinating. Where else are you going to see grown people demonstrate that level of selective hearing and answering? Usually you only get this with 4 year olds and 5 year olds. To me it's fascinating. I watch not because I'm so civically informed or patriotically inclined. I'll admit to you, I've. I do consider myself engaged, but really I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by the ability of some candidates more than others. I won't name names, but there is one candidate that trumps all the other ones who just has the ability. Whenever you think about him, you have to marvel at how he can take any question and pivot. They call it a pivot. That's not just for NBA. They can pivot. It's like an all star watching somebody who is so adept at the art of pivoting from whatever issue is raised to the platform he has established. They all do it, but one candidate does it exceptionally well. This particular candidate, who shall remain nameless. He enjoys conversations about walls. If you ever watch him, anything they ask him, anything they ask him, he can take it to a wall in less than a second. Just real quick, it all comes back to the wall. Touch somebody and say, it's all about the wall. With this guy, it's all about the wall. You ask him a question. Mr. Candidate, what do you think about the education issues in our country? Well, I think the children in our schools need to feel safe while they're being educated. So I'm going to build a wall so they feel safe. It all comes back to the wall. Anything you ask him, what's your foreign policy? I'm going to build a wall. What about women? Women love walls. Just anything you ask him is quick. I don't care what you believe about politics or even where your value says system is. That's not my point. My point is some people can pivot from any issue to their platform. None does it better than Jacob. I want to keep him back there on the pulpit for a minute. I want to talk about how sometimes you can have a real strong opinion and be really ignorant of the issues. Because I asked a young staff member at our church the other day, if you're voting today, who would you vote for? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. He told me real quick who he wanted to vote for. I said, wow, why? He said, I like him, I like him. I said, I didn't ask you who you wanted to have wings with. I said, who do you want to be the leader of the free world? So why do you like him? He said, I don't know, Just something about his personality. It baffled me that a grown up could be so narrow in their thinking that you would reduce your decision about who you want to be the president of your country to a personality type. Don't even care where they stand on the issues. Don't even really want to understand the issues. Just, I like him. It seems pretty crazy that you would put more weight on someone's personality than you would on their position on the issues. If this person is going to make decisions that will affect not only you, but your children, it seemed crazy to me. It hit me on Valentine's Day that some of us enter relationships on the same basis. By which my staff member said they would pick a president is that you connect with people based on their personality and have no idea about their issues. Tell your neighbor again, you have issues. You have issues. Look back at them in response, say, well, you have a subscription, so get off me. Issues. I see Jacob as someone who was greatly blessed by God, even though he had deep issues. Jacob had issues. Jacob was born with issues. Jacob started a fight in Rebekah's womb because of his egocentric issues. He was born with a twin brother who was scheduled to come out ahead. But something within him wanted to disrupt the birth order. Issues. Everybody say issues. Come on. I'm a participatory preacher. Say issues. We met a guy on our Valentine's Day. You got to do it four days early, by the way, for all you rookies that are trying to go out on Valentine's Day, you'll learn. The guy seated at the table, come to church. I love it. He said, what's up with the touch your neighbor stuff? I said, what do you mean? He said, you always touch your neighbor this and touch your neighbor that. I told him, I said, motion creates emotion. I can't have you falling asleep in my sermon. So every once in a while, I'd like you to turn to your neighbor and tell them you have issues. Do it again. Tell them you have issues. I noticed some of y' all are saying that really emphatically, by the way. Some of you are making a list. It's true, though. When you get into a relationship with someone, you often see their personality before you discover their issues. This is not necessarily a relationship sermon or marriage sermon, but I thought in the spirit of the season, I would just throw some little bit of advice in there before you get Engaged to somebody. Take inventory of their issues. I don't mean you have to know everything about them, but don't ignore their issues because you like their personality. Do you see what I'm saying? Jacob had issues that ran so deep that when he couldn't be born first, he tried to find a way to trick himself into the birth order. By the way, for those of you who are new to our church and you want to study this in greater detail, you can check out a series I did. I did a whole series on Jacob called Death to Selfie. The church loved it. It was a good time. It's actually on Netflix. You can go watch it on Netflix. It's on there. So instead of binging on the House of Cards, you can binge on the Word of God. Amen. Put it on the Netflix. Jacob deceives his brother. Later in life, he comes out ahead in a sense. And I won't review all the material, but I was going to a pastor's conference, and I preached on Jacob to our church for several weeks. And the Lord took me back to this passage. I thought I had worn out. So when I was looking at it, I was like, God, I got Jacob. I preached in five weeks. The spirit of God said, you haven't even scratched the surface of Jacob because you talked to the church about his relationship with God, but you never got to his encounter with Esau. That's what I want to talk about today. There comes a time in your life where you have to make peace with Esau. See, Esau is the one. Let me teach a little bit. Esau was the one Jacob had struggled with but never prevailed against his whole life. Esau was the one Jacob pretended to be to get what he thought he needed to have. Esau was the one Jacob even subconsciously and prenatally had problems with. He was predisposed to wrestle with Esau before he had a conscious thought. Now he's 97, and he's preparing to meet with Esau. And if you have a Bible with pages, there's probably a heading on chapter 32 of Genesis that says, jacob prepares to meet Esau. Because there comes a time that no matter how much God has blessed you and no matter how much you've grown to accumulate stuff, or no matter how good your body looks, or no matter how fit you are in your physique, you cannot outrun your dysfunctional relationships forever. One of the greatest blessings that God gives is peace. If you want to pray for anything, pray for peace. Because if all of your prayers center around provision. If you have the provision, but not the peace, you have the external stuff without the internal infrastructure to even enjoy what you prayed for. Pray for peace. The greatest blessing God gives us often has little to do with the resources he provides, but the relationships he restores. We're looking at an Old Testament picture in Genesis 32 of Jacob, who has been able to pivot his whole life. Pivot. So when he gets in trouble at home, he runs to his Uncle Laban's house. When he accidentally marries Leah after serving God for Rachel seven years, he's able to pivot and get Rachel. Anyhow, when Laban begins to cheat him, the Bible says his heart turned against him. Jacob was able to have the business savvy and the common sense to devise a system by which he could stay ahead. But Esau. Esau is that enemy. Esau is that thing he has been fighting against and fleeing from his whole life. By the time he prepares to make peace with Esau, he has been hiding from him for 21 years. I want to ask a question. What are you hiding from? It is the central question of my discourse today, and I believe it's a penetrating question if you'll really answer it in your heart. What are you hiding from? No matter where Jacob turned or where Jacob went, what Jacob did, what he accomplished, there was always Esau. It's the battle he was fighting when he was nine months old. It was the battle he was fighting when he was 97. What is your Esau? What is the thing that no matter how many herds and cattle and goats and relationships you acquire, there is always an Esau? It's your hidden issue. It is not the thing you mention to the people in your egroup. It is not the thing you talk about to people you just met. It is the thing beneath the thing beneath the thing. It is not your behavior. It is not your symptom. It is your issue. Church is ineffective when preachers only address behaviors, because until you get to the issue that creates the behavior, the behavior will manifest because the issue wasn't healed. Where are you hiding from? Your heart may be in hiding because of your fear of rejection. Your heart may be in hiding because of your fear of failure. I understand why Jacob had issues. It's pretty plain in the text. Well, the Bible says there was a lot of favoritism going on in Isaac's household. In fact, I'll show you the scripture. In Genesis 25:28, it says that Isaac, his father, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau. But rebekah loved Jacob. There it is. No wonder the guy spent his whole life in hiding. Because from a very early age, he discovered that he didn't have what his father wanted. He didn't have the skills to be acceptable in the sight of the ones whose affirmation meant the most. When that happens to you, you develop all kinds of devices to hide behind psychologically. They call this abandonment issues. They say that when you have abandonment issues, it can happen through a divorce. It can happen through abuse. It can happen through love with help. It can happen through a circumstance that is so embedded, you can't even remember what it is. But when you have these abandonment issues, they tell us that you tend toward two extremes. One is attachment, and the other is avoidance. You attach. This is Jacob grabbing the heel of Esau, or you avoid. This is Jacob running from that same brother he was trying to attach himself to. One thing I love about God's Word is that it doesn't just address my spirituality, it addresses my psychology. In Jacob, I see an illustrated sermon about the psyche of someone who is running toward and chasing something they can never get, meanwhile running from something they don't want to face. I believe every person in our church can relate to Jacob hiding from an Esau in your life, hiding and hoping, hoping that no one sees you for who you really are. So you invent methods by which to be impressive. That's what Jacob did. He makes a plan. He makes a plan to hide his issues. He gets his messengers. You have to understand, in the last 21 years, Jacob was not struggling. Jacob was prospering. Jacob was succeeding. Jacob was accumulating. Jacob was working his way up. By this time, Jacob is very rich and he has a lot of kids. So he's on the external level, doing pretty well for himself. What he does, and I think we all do this, is he tries to use what he has accumulated to hide who he is. It's the right amount of quiet today. I can tell I'm on that nerve. I'm up in your stuff. Touch your neighbor, say, come out of hiding. Come out of hiding. Come out of hiding. Jacob gets a strategy. He gets a plan. He calls his messengers. He has a lot of people working for him. He has a lot of representatives. And he calls his representatives and he says, here's what I want you to do. Line up the goats and line up the rams. Line up the camels and line up the cows. Line up the bulls. Get some donkeys, male donkeys, female donkeys. Put the servants out there. He arranges what's around him to hide what's within him. Maybe Esau will accept me if I send him a goat. Maybe Esau will accept me if I send him a donkey. Maybe people will like me if I make them laugh.