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Reconciling with God

Reconciling With God

DBC 11.5.06

Gen. 33:1-10; 2 Cor. 5.17-18; Gen. 35.29; 1 Cor. 10.15-17

Today we are picking back up with Jacob’s story and our journey with God sermon series I have on my mind the topic of reconciliation. To reconcile is to bring two separated pieces back into wholeness. Most importantly, in our lives, we need such wholeness in our relationship with God. And in one’s relationship and journey with God, one is quick to learn that such wholeness with God leads to unity with others.

Do you remember where we left off in Jacob’s story? He had tricked his brother out of his birthright blessing. He impersonated his brother and deceived his father Isaac to gain his father’s blessing. And now Esau was bloodthirsty (Gen.27.41) and Jacob was on the run.

Jacob runs off to his uncle Laban, who is a bit of a trickster himself, and spends the next 7 and plus years working for his uncle and marrying two of Laban’s daughter’s (Leah and Rachel). After this, Jacob’s fractured relationship with Esau comes back into the storyline.

Esau was the other guy that stood in Jacob’s way to success. This is often the case in ourselves; we develop a case of the self-isms (self-reliance, self-preservation, self-advancement, self-justification, and self-vindication).

Jacob was self-reliant and Esau was the other guy that Jacob didn’t need. When we are self-reliant, we are determined to make it without the help of the other guy (we’re King-Kong in the chimp cage.)

Jacob was into self-preservation and Esau was the other guy that threatened Jacob. When we are guided by self-preservation, we are consumed with keeping the other guy from getting what we have.

Jacob was a self-advancer and Esau was the other guy whom he could step on and over to get his shortcut to success in life. When we’re locked into self-advancement, using the other guy becomes a way to advance our own agendas.

Jacob was self-justified and Esau was foolish other guy that “deserved” to be tricked. When we are self-justified, we always measure and value ourselves over the other guy.

Jacob was self-vindicated and Esau was the other guy that Jacob had to beat out. When we are motivated with self-vindication in our veins, others become the competition and threat to our happiness and goals.

When Jacob looses himself to God (surrender’s his selfhood to God, Genesis 32.22-31), then the way he views Esau, the other guy, changes as well.

Jacob’s surrender to God is as much about reconciling with God as it was about reconciling with Jacob’s past and his offended and betrayed brother Esau. The same is true with us, to reconcile with God means that we must reconcile with others.

Last week when Amy’s parents spoke shared us, the theme of their stories could not have been more appropriate for our topic of reconciliation today. They spoke of their ministry of ethnic reconciliation within a Balkan region that has been plagued by ethnic warring and discrimination for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Amy and I visited Amy’s parents a year or so after the Kosovo war where Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic had led in genocides of countless Albanians. The tension and fear in the air was still so raw and volatile.

I followed Amy’s father to a meeting in the home of a Macedonian Methodist preacher. An orthodox Macedonian man was there, as well as an Albanian refugee. The conversation traversed three languages (Macedonian, Albanian, and English). English was used for my benefit.

Wanting to follow the conversation, I nudged Dad (Amy’s father) so that he would translate the conversation for me. At one point they said that the Balkan region was a boiling pot and that it had always been that way. That was such a vivid description and it has stayed with me ever since that visit.

In Macedonia, the Macedonian Orthodox Church has posted huge crosses on mountainsides visible for miles and miles. In our culture the cross on church steeples is often a sign of hope and reconciliation. In Macedonian, for many ethnic minorities, the cross is a sign of domination and persecution.

As Amy’s parents stated so eloquently, their ministry has become centered around the great need of reconciliation with the diverse ethnic groups what have been harshly divided for centuries; and this is where the gospel of Christ and call to reconciliation is apropos

Reconciliation with God means that we are to seek reconciliation with the other guy.

Paul said it this way:

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,

In Gen. 33:1-10, Jacob begins his quest to seek wholeness with Esau whom he deeply betrayed less than a decade or so earlier:

1 Now Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and there, Esau was coming, and with him were four hundred men . . .3 Then he crossed over before them and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. 4 But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. 5 And he lifted his eyes and saw the women and children, and said, “Who are these with you?” So he said, “The children whom God has graciously given your servant.” 6 Then the maidservants came near, they and their children, and bowed down. 7 And Leah also came near with her children, and they bowed down. Afterward Joseph and Rachel came near, and they bowed down. 8 Then Esau said, “What do you mean by all this company which I met?” And he said, “These are to find favor in the sight of my lord.” 9 But Esau said, “I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.” 10 And Jacob said, “No, please, if I have now found favor in your sight, then receive my present from my hand, inasmuch as I have seen your face as though I had seen the face of God, and you were pleased with me.

Reconciliation with God is possible because when God looks at us he sees us covered with grace; he sees the face of Jesus in our faces.

Reconciliation with the others becomes possible when we see the face of God on the face of others.

Jacob came to a point in his journey of life where all of his self-reliance, self-preservation, self-advancement, self-justification, and self-vindication left him dry and empty. His reconciliation and wholeness in life happened when he looked upon Esau, not as the other guy to steal from, step over, run from, or to defeat, but as a fellow beloved son of God.

Esau in Jacob’s perception, moved from being other guy to beloved brother. Chris Trevino told me about a 110 yr-old British man and 109 yr-old German man who were just recently brought together. They lamented over the WWI that had so divided their countries. True liberty is only possible with the release of resentment and bitterness that comes from reconciliation and forgiveness.

One of my favorite OT passages is where Jacob and Esau after years of separation unite in harmony and bury their father Isaac together:

29 So Isaac breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people, being old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

Today as we come to the Lord’s Table and the topic of reconciliation with both God and others is paramount:

When we drink the cup of blessing, aren't we taking into ourselves the blood, the very life, of Christ? And isn't it the same with the loaf of bread we break and eat? Don't we take into ourselves the body, the very life, of Christ? Because there is one loaf, our many-ness becomes one-ness—Christ doesn't become fragmented in us. Rather, we become unified in him . . . (1 Cor. 10.15-17, The Message)