Jacob 180
When God Turns a Life Around
The 179th Degree
July 27, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
100 out of 100 people living in this generation are going to die. The younger you are, the harder it is for you to mentally process this fact. You will die someday. Your heart will stop, your brain will cease to fire neurotransmitters across the synapses, your respiratory system will shut down and someone you do not know who has been educated in the medical field will official pronounce that your story on earth has come to its end. Encouraged yet? Death is not something we like to speak casually of and this message which concludes our study of the life of Jacob is no exception. The man whom God had destined for a 180° turnaround moves through that final 179th degree as his amazing life comes to a close. How would Jacob die? The taker became a giver. The one who stole a blessing leaves one and the same man who lived for his own glory now points us toward the glory of Another. He may have lived poorly at times but Jacob’s final moments reveals to us how to die marvelously.
From Drought to Downpour
July 20, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
Jacob’s long season of sadness and loss became a time of unexpected rejoicing and renewal, his drought turned into a downpour. When we last left Jacob he was standing in the shards of shattered dreams. He believed his favorite son to have been wrenched away from him through a heartbreaking death. What Jacob did not know - for 22 years! – was that Joseph was alive and had risen to prominence in another land. This message traces the astounding pathway that reunited a grieving father with a long-lost son.
Apparent Death of a Dream
July 13, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
By watching Jacob, we can learn how best to respond when we also experience the apparent death of our dreams. Jacob's long journey brought him back to the land of God’s promise. Now things could finally settle down. Too bad that Jacob’s sons decided to stir things up again. This scene in Jacob’s life is one of anguish as his favorite son, Joseph, is suddenly wrenched away from him. Jacob had been living in a season of great delight but had unknowingly been sowing seeds of hostility in his oldest sons. When they acted out in wrath on this particular day, Jacob’s life fell apart again. How would the aged patriarch respond to his renewed grief?
Journey on
July 6, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
What separates the true believers from the false, superficial or nominal religious person? The Scriptures define authentic faith as perseverance until the race on earth is completed. Jacob had his own faith tested and purified over the course of several decades. In Genesis 35 we uncover what may be his strongest test yet. His childhood nanny, wife and father all die… how will Jacob respond? Grief has the ability to strip away our crutches, and Jacob has his pulled out in this chapter. Listen and learn how to process grief while maintaining confidence in the goodness of God.
ISRAEL: Jacob's New Start
June 8, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
How do you feel when you personally fail God? Do you try to undo the bad with a little extra good, or do you hide from God? We move forward with Jacob as God’s relentless mercy and grace are placed on lavish display: Jacob receives the blessing of God right after one of his biggest faith implosions. Jacob receives a new start when he least expects it, and God can do the same for us.
Man-Wrath
June 1, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
Sexual assault, torture, greed, deceit, looting and murder- few passages of Scripture are more disturbing than this one. For those who say that the bible is outdated and irrelevant, we invite you to be corrected as Genesis 34 could easily be speaking of any day in America. What is all the more alarming is that some of these actions come from people who have a history of covenant with the saving God of Israel. If you desire to be sobered and steadied, please listen. This is depravity on display.
Beautiful Body-Slam
May 18, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
What does it mean to wrestle with God? Most of us may struggle to define it but we have all experienced it. God will break the whole of you in order to rescue a part of you, and the time had come for Jacob to be set free a little more from himself. This message will help you who are struggling in their walks with the Lord. For you who live in partial obedience to God, you'll learn why He seems to be an opponent to you. If your life is marked with a limp after wrestling with the Almighty, there is peace and comfort knowing that you will never be what you once were.
Haunted Conscience
May 18, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
God’s grace is far greater than the memory of our sinful past. Two decades had passed since Jacob and Easu had last seen each other and Jacob’s conscience was haunting him. Would Esau have forgiven him for his deception twenty years prior? Accusation does not always come from Satan; sometimes we convince ourselves that punishment is just around the bend. God is relentless to lead us in confronting our guilty fears and to trust Him with the outcome.
A Dumb Husband & The Attentive God
May 4, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
What makes a woman valuable? How can she avoid the pitfalls of Western culture which insist that she be beautiful? Seeking validity through the acceptance of men has never been God’s plan for His daughters. Leah’s story is one of the most moving accounts of any women in God’s Word. One cannot help but to feel compassion for a woman whose whole story is one of neglect, dismissal and rejection. Today’s woman finds her value in one Man – the Lord Jesus Christ, because He is all she truly needs.
Lovestruck & Sucker-Punched
April 13, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
This message focuses further on the life of Jacob and highlights a season in his life when Jacob met his match. Laban was tricky, deceitful and cunning. God allows Laban a lot of latitude to provoke Jacob. In allowing this, God holds a mirror in front of Jacob’s face to show him that he also is a cunning trickster. The saying “What goes around comes around” is not an entirely unbiblical notion. The Apostle Paul put it a different way when he wrote, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” Because God is working to develop all of His children, we can expect some difficult lessons along life’s way. To the degree that we excuse our character flaws and sin, God will work overtime to rid us of these traits. And sometimes He places impossible people in our lives to accomplish this very work. In the process, two women, Leah & Rachel, have to endure what these two foolish men kindle. May God grant us all grace to overcome our personality and character trouble spots. May He never leave us alone until this is accomplished.
God's Covenant with a Con-Man
April 6, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
Grace – the soothing word for overwhelmed souls. God’s blessing is the last thing we expect when we have miserably failed in life, yet this is exactly what Jacob finds in this message. What would you expect if you had to become a fugitive from your current life? What if your sins had crumbled down around you and ruined everything? What if your safety was threatened and your enemy was loading his gun? And….what if…you completely deserved it. In this one encounter with the immeasurable grace of God, everything inside of Jacob shifts and he becomes a new man. When he is at His worst, God comes through with assurance of His best. There was hope for him and there is hope for all of us.
Dysfunction & Division
March 30, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
It doesn't take long for any of us to step out from God’s plan. It sometimes feels like an eternity before we can find ourselves back in it. The family of Isaac would learn this lesson the hard way. You and I can slow down and listen to how they went wrong so that the same collapse might never find our own address. Isaac had a household filled with a lot of worthless communication: favoritism by parents, sibling rivalry, deception, disrespect and dysfunction. In this scene of trouble there arises one moment of time that would define the next few decades of family life. Nobody saw it for what it would be become – not Isaac, Rebekah, Esau or Jacob.
Two Troubling Appetites
March 23, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
Both Esau and Jacob reveal to us what it means to confess our need for deliverance. These twins were anything but identical. Who would have thought that two boys, conceived in the same moment, sharing the same womb and growing up with the same set of parents could lead such drastically different lives. Esau was a brawny man with no spiritual brains. Jacob was a conniving schemer who desired to appropriate God’s treasures with man’s methods. In this message, both men get exactly what they want while neither of them could foresee what was coming to them around the corner.
And So It Begins
March 16, 2014 • Jeff Lyle
This first message in the series on the life of Jacob shows us the beginning of destinies and helps us to look for God in the most unassuming details of our lives. Sometimes destiny is birthed in a prayer room. Isaac had a prophetic promise from God which defined his life. Waiting on that promise to materialize was a deep test of his faith and the Hebrew patriarch knew he had passed the test on that day when his twin sons were born. God was unfolding his plan of redemption through one family and, ultimately, through one of those twins: Jacob. This is the beginning.