Tunnel Vision

1. INTRODUCTION
1. (Life of Jacob Series Slide)
2. Good morning! My name is David Sorn, and I’m the Lead Pastor of Renovation Church.
1. Happy Father’s Day!
2. Great to be back.
1. We’ll see if I remember how to do this after being on sabbatical for 5 weeks.
3. In 22 years of ministry, I had literally never gone more than 2 Sundays in a row without preaching, so hopefully I’m not rusty. 😊
3. So glad you’re here this morning as we are starting a Brand-New Summer Series.
1. For the past 5 years or so, we’ve studied a book or person in the Old Testament each summer:
1. We’ve done Elijah, Joshua, Zechariah, Esther, Elisha, and this summer we will be studying the Life of Jacob from the Book of Genesis
4. Genesis, which is the first book of the Bible, starts by telling the story of creation, the fall, the flood, and nations being scattered.
1. But starting at chapter 12, it zooms into one family, starting with Abraham.
1. Abraham is in many ways the father of the Jewish people and Jesus’ earthly lineage traces back to him as well.
1. And God called Abraham out of his foreign land, to the Promised Land that would eventually become Israel.
2. Furthermore, God promised to make Abraham into a great nation, into a family of people that would one day bless the whole earth (through Christ of course)
2. And Abraham and his wife Sarah eventually have a baby boy named Isaac, who grew up and married Rebekah, and Isaac and Rebekah had twins, one of which was Jacob, whom we are going to study this summer
1. So let’s open the Bible.
5. Genesis 25:19-26
6. Page 17
1. You’re going to see this summer that Jacob is not a perfect person. He’s messy, often deceitful and manipulative.
1. But Jacob’s life story will remind us that God works through imperfect people (like you & me) and transforms them for His purposes.
2. (Genesis 25:19-26) – NIV
3. 19 This is the account of the family line of Abraham’s son Isaac.
   Abraham became the father of Isaac, 20 and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean.
   21 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. 22 The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord.
   23 The Lord said to her,
   “Two nations are in your womb,
       and two peoples from within you will be separated;
   one people will be stronger than the other,
       and the older will serve the younger.”
   24 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25 The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. 26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them.
7. (Tunnel Vision Title Slide)
1. We mentioned Rebekah briefly in our message on infertility this past December.
1. If you do the math in this passage, you can see that she was childless for the first 20 years of her marriage.
1. Long time. And she experienced that pain of infertility as many did in the Bible.
2. But eventually, the Lord blesses her with not just one child, but two!
1. And both were destined, we read in verse 23, to become fathers of entire nations.
1. Later this summer, we’ll see Jacob’s name changed to Israel, and he becomes (like Abraham) another important father of the Israelite Nation.
2. And his twin brother Esau, becomes the father of the Edomite nation…a prominent rival to Israel throughout the Old Testament.
3. If you look at the end of verse 25, there is a little letter “d”, and if you find the “d” in the footnotes, you’ll see that Esau’s name, in Hebrew means “Hairy” for he was born with a lot of hair.
4. And then look at the footnote for the letter “e” in 26.
1. Jacob’s name means “he grasps the heel,” which was a Hebrew idiom for “He deceives”
1. Can you imagine this:
1. “Ooh! Cute! What’s your baby’s name?”
2. It’s “He deceives”
2. But fascinatingly enough, Jacob’s going to do just that throughout much of his life. He will become a trickster.
2. ESAU’S TUNNEL VISION
1. Let’s read about his first instance of that now:
1. Genesis 25:27-34
2. Page 17
3. (Genesis 25:27-34) - NIV
4. 27 The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. 28 Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
   29 Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. 30 He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.)
   31 Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.”
   32 “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?”
   33 But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.
   34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left.
   So Esau despised his birthright.
5. (Tunnel Vision Title Slide)
1. So we have these twins (Jacob & Esau), but they’re very different from each other.
1. They’re not identical genetically or in personality.
1. Esau is the avid outdoorsman, and Jacob is the avid indoorsman. 😊
1. He likes hanging out in the tents, cooking.
2. And one day he’s cooking up a delicious red stew, and Esau is so hungry that he wants that stew more than anything.
1. So the crafty and deceitful Jacob says, “You can have it if you sell me your birthright.”
1. And so Esau gives Jacob his birthright and eats the stew.
1. And by the way, Jacob is not the good character here.
1. There is no good vs bad.
1. I’m going to talk more about Jacob’s sinful & deceptive personality next week
6. But what exactly is a birthright? What are we talking about here? Especially in those days?
1. If you’re taking notes, you can write that the BIRTHRIGHT was reserved for the firstborn son.
1. Which, in this case, was Esau.
1. Remember, Jacob came out just behind him, grasping his heel.
2. The firstborn son, because of his birthright, became the new head of the family when the father died.
3. And the firstborn son also received a double portion of the inheritance from their parents.
1. So twice as much as any other son.
4. And in the case of Jacob & Esau’s family, the person with the birthright, would also be the one to inherit the covenant promises that God made with their grandfather, Abraham.
1. And what was that Covenant?
2. It was God’s promise to give Abraham’s descendants the Promised Land, to make them into a great nation (numerous as the stars), and that one of their descendants (Jesus) would bless the whole earth.
1. And ALL OF THAT would happen through the family line of WHOEVER had the birthright, not their brothers.
1. This is a massive deal.
2. And Esau trades that all in for some soup.
7. OUR TUNNEL VISION
1. And ultimately, we can say the Esau has Tunnel Vision.
1. (Tunnel Vision image slide)
2. Tunnel Vision is where you’re so intensely focused on one thing that you end up ignoring all other surrounding details, perspectives, and factors.
1. Take this image for example.
1. This looks like a great scene to head to.
1. But you don’t know!
2. You’re not seeing the whole picture.
1. For all you know there are 3 bears waiting to maul you on each side of the tunnel once you get out. 😊
2. And lots of times, we can get Tunnel Vision spiritually, or even morally.
1. There may be a deal or choice you can make at work this week that will help you advance your career or make more money…or might help people think better of you
1. But the deal, or the way you’re going about it, is dishonest, or displeasing to God.
1. And so in the end, you won’t have his favor, and his blessing.
3. But lots of times we go forward with those sorts of things anyway because Tunnel Vision is firstly:
1. #1: Tunnel Vision is a refusal to see anything else
1. When you want something so bad, that you refuse to listen to any advice, you have tunnel vision.
2. I remember, when I was 22, and I was just about to get married, and I needed a car.
1. And I knew a guy whose dad who was a used car salesman, so I went to see him to try and buy a car.
1. And it was May 31st, and this guy told me he had to move this car by the end of the month, so he had a great deal on it…he was basically just working me over.
1. And I remember vividly talking about the supposed deal with my future father-in-law, and he said to me, “I think you should wait, and look at other cars, and have someone check this car out some more”
1. And I just had young man’s tunnel vision.
2. And I said, “No, this will work! It’s fine. And plus they need to sell it today”
1. So I bought this Ugly Green Saturn for $5,000.
1. And it was such a lemon, that it didn’t even last me 12 months.
2. It was a horrible investment, that I could’ve avoided, but I refused to see anything else but what I wanted.
4. And sin works like that a lot.
1. Like, the alcoholic who is driven to go back to alcohol, and all of a sudden their brain can’t find a single reason why it would be a bad idea to pick up the bottle again
2. Or the person driven by lust who just wants to finally have that affair so badly, that they can’t see a reason not to anymore.
1. When I taught on adultery back when we went through Proverbs, I shared a quote from Bob Lepine on that issue where he simply said this to those thinking about adultery:
1. “No sex is that good.” – Bob Lepine
1. Meaning, if you were to snap out of tunnel vision, and broaden your sights…
1. …You’d realize that not even the highest of pleasures for one evening is ever worth throwing your family away, a lifetime of shame, a lifetime of your kids looking down on you, divorce, you name it.
1. But in tunnel vision, you’re not thinking about any of that.
5. I mean, what do you think Esau was thinking even the very next morning…
1. When he was just hungry again.
1. Was it worth it?
1. No way.
2. And so as a Christian, any time you catch yourself saying, “I’ve GOT to do this. I just don’t see a reason not to! I need to do this! I don’t care what anyone else says”
1. Start getting nervous. You may have caught a case of “tunnel vision”
8. DEVALUING OF THE SPIRITUAL
1. There is a second thing I want you to see about tunnel vision.
1. #1: Tunnel Vision is a refusal to see anything else
2. #2: Tunnel Vision is a devaluing of the spiritual
1. Look at verse 32. Esau says:
1. “Look, I am about to die. What Good is a birthright to me?”
1. Dramatic much?
2. But look at how he devalues the spiritual…the birthright.
1. Verse 34 says he even “despised” his birthright
1. And remember, the birthright contained some amazing promises!
1. But Esau devalues it.
3. He didn’t deny his birthright existed.
1. He simply decided it was not worth much.
1. That is at the heart of a lot of sin.
2. Sin is not merely breaking rules.
2. Sin can also be looking at what God calls good and saying:
1. “I would rather have something else.”
1. The pull of the immediate becomes SO strong that we devalue the greater thing that is coming later.
2. It reminds me of the famous Marshmallow experiment that was done originally in 1970, and has been done probably a hundred times since.
1. Now, this Marshmallow experiment is not to be confused with my awesome dog…
1. (Marshmellow The Dog)
9. …also named Marshmellow…who just turned 1
10. But here’s how the experiment works.
1. (Marshmallow Test Experiment)
2. You put one kid in a room at a time, usually around 4 years old,
1. And you give them ONE Marshmallow, and say, “You can eat this right now, OR, if you wait until I come back, I’ll give you another one, and you can eat TWO!”
3. And researchers actually tracked the original kids from 1970, and the kids who could wait, who could live in self-denial, in delayed gratification, actually went on to get higher SAT scores, got into better colleges, got better jobs, were less likely to get into drugs, and so forth.
11. But I watched a few of these experiments on YouTube this week, and one of the things that jumped out to me, was this:
1. Of the kids that ate the first Marshmallow without waiting for a second one, they rarely just shoved it in their mouth.
1. But actually, what they did was squirm for 5 minutes with impatience, staring longingly at the marshmallow, and they almost every one of them, started by eating the tiniest speck of Marshmallow you’ve ever seen.
1. And I thought, “don’t we do the same with sin”
1. We say, “I know God’s way is better, and He has great things in store if I trust His word…”
1. BUT…(and in our tunnel vision we can’t keep our eyes of the “Marshmallow of sin” in front of us
1. And we say, “BUT, I’ll just try a little of this sin, maybe no will know….it can’t be bad”
2. But listen, every single kid that ate a little, ended up eating the whole thing.
1. Every time.
2. And they got themselves in that mess because they devalued what was coming.
1. And in choosing sin over God, we do the same. We devalue what He has in store for us when we choose sin over His ways.
12. LACK OF FAITH
1. And ultimately what that is, is a lack of faith.
1. #1: Tunnel Vision is a refusal to see anything else
2. #2: Tunnel Vision is a devaluing of the spiritual
3. #3: Tunnel Vision is a lack of faith
2. Now, when we study our passage today, we of course have hindsight.
1. We have a piece of the story that Esau did not.
1. At Esau’s point in history, most of the promises of that Covenant had not been fulfilled yet
1. Their family wasn’t very big, they still didn’t have that much land, and of course the Messiah was still 2,000 years away.
1. It’s easy for us to say Esau made a bad choice, but for him to believe in the promises of the birthright, he would have needed a decent amount of…FAITH
2. I think of it this way:
1. Any basketball fans here?
1. I really enjoyed watching the NBA Finals this year with the Knicks & Spurs
1. (Photo of NBA Finals)
2. At the beginning of the year, the New York Knicks were certainly not favorites to win the championship (which they did)
3. And according to predictions at the beginning of the year, the San Antonio Spurs were even less likely to make the NBA Finals…
1. Now, you can say, in hindsight, well, they the Spurs had 7’4” Wembanyama, of course they were going to make it to the championship.
1. But, in fact, 8 months ago, before the season started, experts only gave the Spurs 65-1 odds of making the finals…that’s a 1.5% chance.
1. Yet they did.
2. And so again, Esau, he’s like at the beginning of the season:
1. He might be thinking, “Who cares about my birthright!

“I don’t even know if I’ll live to see any of these promises! And what are the chances it will even come true? Like 1.5% of something? I’m not seeing any fruit from those so-called-promises yet. Right now, I just want what’s in front of me, I want what I can touch & see, I want this food.

1. But here’s an important difference in the illustrations
1. Someone making predictions in sports, is doing just that: Making a prediction.
2. (Tunnel Vision Title Slide)
1. But Esau had God’s Word to go on:
1. God Himself had already made these promises to his Grandfather Abraham.
1. These promises were for his family, and they were Esau’s to have as the firstborn, but he throws it away.
1. He lacked the FAITH to believe it to be true…and his tunnel vision was his demise.
1. Something that God, of course, knew would happen all along.
3. But my friends this is where faith is so important.
1. Your sinful nature will lead you into tunnel vision almost daily.
1. It’ll convince that you just have to give into your anger…that’ll it feel better to just yell at your family (don’t think about the consequences(
2. It’ll convince you that just HAVE to give into your greed & buy that thing you can’t afford on Amazon Prime, or be in that relationship…even though the person you want to date isn’t a believer in Christ.
2. And so it takes FAITH…FAITH…to believe that God’s ways are better.
1. Notice I didn’t say they were easier.
1. I said they were better.
1. That they lead to life.
2. As Jesus teaches in Matthew 7, the storms of life will surely come, but if your house is built upon putting His words into practice, your house will stand!
3. So can you believe that God has no tunnel vision? That God has the full picture?
1. That God has seen everything, in the past, your present, and all of the future.
1. And that He knows the best path for you?
2. So do not trust the tunnel vision of your feelings, but trust the full picture God gives us in His word.
1. Have FAITH that His way is better.
4. BAPTISM
5. And I want to show you some examples of people who have chosen to believe that God’s way is better…as it is baptism Sunday for us.
6. (Baptism Slide)
7. At this point I want to call out Baptism Team on stage.
1. Baptisms are a visual reminder that God’s Son, Jesus Christ has paid for our sins.
1. And by our faith in Him, we were forgiven, washed clean.
1. And not only that, that God has raised us up from the dead and given us new life.
2. Baptism doesn’t save you.
1. But it is such an important symbol of his love.
3. We have heard the testimony of every person getting baptized today and every person will be baptized by sponsors (people who’ve had a spiritual impact on them)
8. (Baptism Interest Mtg slide)
1. And again, if you have given your life to Christ, baptism is THE next step that the Bible tells you to do after you give your life to Christ.
1. So if you need to get baptized, I want you to go to the baptism interest meeting that is happening today after the service in the Northpoint room!
1. All right, let’s get to some baptisms…starting with our live testimony

WORD COUNT GOAL: 3200

1. GOSPEL SECTION
1. (Tunnel Vision Title Slide)
2. What you’re seeing is a heart of faith.
1. You’re seeing hearts that have said, “I don’t need everything that sin and pleasure and the world may offer me, just give me Jesus”
1. “I want my birthright”
3. They’ve chosen the Gospel.
1. And the Gospel, that’s the Good News Summary of this book: Is that we have all sinned against each other and against God.
1. We’ve broken His holy laws.
1. And for that, we deserve his justice…his punishment.
1. Which is eternity apart from Him. The Bible says it’s hell.
2. But God, in his mercy, and his love for you, sent His own Son Jesus to die on the cross.
1. And in doing so, Jesus was taking the punishment for you.
1. And if you believe in that, and you make Jesus the King of your life, you can have eternal life in heaven (not in hell)
1. You can be forgiven of your sins.
2. And you can know and walk with God today.
1. You can have that birthright…that promise of a future blessing today.
4. You know, in our hindsight, we look at Esau, and we say, “Why wouldn’t you take that promise from God? Why would you choose such a small, temporary thing, like soup, instead?”
1. But listen my friend, sometime, when your life is over, when we look back in hindsight from eternity, from the window of heaven or hell….
1. …every single person, if they could, would say to those still living on earth:
2. “Why wouldn’t you accept this promise from God?”
3. “Why wouldn’t you give your life completely over to Him?”
1. “Do not choose the temporary fillings of sin, when God is offering you eternal paradise instead?”
2. Don’t sell away that promise for a proverbial bowl of soup.
1. It takes FAITH to believe that something greater is coming…but it is.
1. Believe my friend. Believe.
1. God can forgive you today and come into your life if you would only believe.
2. And if you’re ready to truly come to truly accept Jesus as your Savior, I want to give you that opportunity today.
3. Let’s just have everyone, just for a minute, close your eyes and bow your head.
4. If you need to make this decision for the first time today…to tell Jesus that you need His forgiveness for your sins…to make Him the Leader of your life…to accept His gift of Eternal life…
1. In just a minute, I’m going to ask you to stand up
1. No one’s going to be looking at you at all, that’s why we had everyone close their eyes.
2. But sometimes in life, we just need that moment…that moment where you say, “God, I want that birthright. That promise. I believe”
5. If you need to tell God for the first time today that you do believe, and you want to follow Him and be forgiven.
1. I invite you to raise your hand where you are right now
6. The Bible tells us that in this moment we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths.
7. Dear God
1. I confess to you, that I have sinned against you.
2. But God I believe, that you sent your Son Jesus, to take my place
1. And God I thank you, for forgiving my sins.
3. And now I commit, to following you, with my life.

Amen, you can have a seat.

1. 2 very Quick things
1. 1) If you haven’t taken the step to get baptized yet
1. (Baptism interest meeting slide)
1. …head to that interest meeting right now. Follow the signs to the northpoint room.
2. 2) For the ___ of you that stood up, come meet me right up here for some really important resources and next steps.