Breaking family patterns that keep you stuck

Automatically generated from the video captions and lightly tidied, so expect the odd misheard word.

My favorite movie of all time came out in 1999. This movie was legendary. I mean, like when the protagonist dodges the bullets in slow motion and he does that. I'm talking about The Matrix. This is like my favorite movie and this movie will never be topped. So, for the last 27 years, I have watched this movie countless times.

I had my kids watch it countless times. I talk about it so much because what? It's my favorite. And I never thought it could be topped up until two weeks ago. It was topped by a movie I have watched in the cinemas three times and I'm thinking about going to watch it a fourth time and it's only been out two weeks. What movie am I talking about?

I'm talking about the Odyssey. I'm talking about Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. This is now my favorite movie. And you say why? It's because obviously it's masterfully told. But if you think about what is an Odyssey, an Odyssey is a journey, right?

A person is on a journey. And in this movie, it's a book by the way. So maybe you just if you don't like movies, you can read the book. It's a book and in the book the main character Odysius I'm not going to spoil it for anyone right this would be like in the synopsis at the back the main character Odicius goes through challenges and obstacles and I'm sure you've actually heard of some of these challenges you've heard of the sirens you know like those kind of mermaids things that you know sing the song and they try to ent trap you is from that movie so he goes through challenges he faces giants, he faces storms, he has to face his past. And at the end of it, he's not the same person that he once was. He is different.

He has become someone different. As somebody says that like on the next slide Ralph said it's not about the destination but it's about the journey. You see it's because in the journey you become somebody different and depending on how you encounter the obstacles and challenges on the journey it determines what you're going to be at the end. So on the next slide so I'm going to ask you this. So in your journey in life, are you sleepwalking through your Are you sleepwalking to the point that when you get to the end, what you become is what you hated? How many times have some of us said, "I will never be like my father.

I will never be like my mom. I'll never be like my brother. I'll never be fill in the You saw something in them that you did not want for your life. But fast forward a couple of years, you have the same temper. You have the same tone. You have the same silence.

You have the same patterns in your life. How did that happen? The very thing that you did not want to be, you are that. The very same thing you said, when I grow up, this will not be in my marriage. When I grow up, I would not work this way. When I grow up, my friendships will not be this way.

But you ended up just being that very thing. Might it be in your odyssey, in your journey in life, you have slipped. You've been and not engaging in those storms in life in a way that's going to make you a better person. So for in the next slide I want to make a distinction here what are called influencing factor what I'm calling influencing factors and what I'm calling decisions. Right? So an example of influencing factors is your family history.

The history the family that you're born into. You did not decide it whether that family is healthy or dysfunctional, where you grew up, when you grew up, you know, you know where you live, you know what happens to you, all these things, they are influencing factors, but they don't make the decision. So that's why you can have the same two people grow up in the same family, the same environments, the same patterns and different people. It is all to do with how you engaged with the influencing factors in your life. So for instance on the next slide and I now want us to the reason I bring that up is I want us to look at Jacob's family. All right.

Jacob family. He had 12 sons and one daughter called Dena. One of those sons was Joseph of course. And then you've got the many But I want us to examine how is it that the brothers came to the point where they were willing to kill their brother and they were willing to kill him like they actually had to downgrade it. First they were going to kill him outright and then they downgraded to ah let's not kill him outright. Let's kill him by just putting me in a pit.

But they were still wanting to kill him. We're just going to kill him by starvation. And only greed stopped them from killing him. They're like, "Oh, let's just sell him to Egypt and make a profit." How did that happen? So, let's read. So, in verse 23, so just in verse 23, when Joseph came to his brothers, they straight they stripped off Joseph's robe, the long sleeved robe that he had on.

And in 24, then they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty and without water and food. They sat down to eat a meal. How can you sit down to eat? How can your heart be so hard after what they had just done? But they did this.

And actually in the next verses these are the ones. So when they bring the report to the father, so they bring the report. So they say then they took the robe of Joseph and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. And then on the next slide, then they sent the robe with long sleeves and they brought it to their father and said, "We have found this. Please examine it. Is it the robe of your son or not?" And then on the next slide, this is our key verse here.

And then Jacob the father recognized the robe and he said, "The robe is of my son A wild animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces. Oh, he is so right and so wrong at the same time." How is he right? Yes. Wild animals have devoured his son, but not the wild animals that he's thinking of. He is thinking maybe it was a wolf, maybe it was a lion, but it was the brothers that devoured him.

So my question is, how did Joseph's brothers become like wild animals? How did they become like what animals willing to kill and say and to sell their brothers on the next may I say to you it has to do with those influencing factors we were talking about the influencing factors of when they were hit with these negative influencing they did not react to it very Well, so this family is a family that's full of This is a family. It's okay to have a favorite movie, but you cannot have a favorite son. But again, the Bible doesn't tell you don't have favorite sons. In this story gives you a story of what happens when you have favorites amongst your children. It just ends in a mess.

This is a family full of favorites. This is a family full of deception. This is a family full of jealousy. I'm just going to give you a little bit of the influence influencing factor of just the history of this family. So if we just go back, sorry, if we just go back a little bit. One more slide.

M Isaac favored Esau. Yeah. And then and then and then the mother Rebecca favored Jacob. Thank you. And then on the next slide. All right.

So we got that. So that's the f on the favoritism side and even Abraham the great-grandfather he favored Isaac over a guy called Ishmael right and then when we go to the next slide deception when we talk about deception so deception in this family so the brothers deceive their father but guess what deception runs in the family because this the uncle a guy called Laban he deceives Jacob wanted to marry Rachel but then he does this switcheroo and gives him Leia, the person that he didn't want. So there's Jacob himself deceives his father to steal a blessing. And then on the next slide, deceives one king and says, "You know, my wife is my sister." So he lies. But guess where he learned it from? He learned it from his father, Abraham.

He also lied that Sarah was his sister. Do you see that? There's just a pattern of deception. There is a pattern of jealousy. There is a pattern of favoritism because for instance the wives you know was jealous of Rachel. Rachel was jealous of so these are the influencing factors that are going.

So on the next slide. So I want to then ask you of when you look at your life, what influencing factors are happening in your life? And are you aware of what these influencing factors And because if you're not aware of it, if we just go back, if you're not aware of it, you're just going to be coping and pasting things that happened generation the past and generation past, you're just going to carry that generational cycle or the generational curses. These are influencing factors that are happening. So, I just want you to be truthful and reflect on What are the cycles that I'm repeating? What are the patterns that I am struggling with?

So for instance, if you struggle for instance with gambling or if you struggle with watching things that are pure on your TVs and laptop or if you struggle with alcoholism or if you struggle with just finances or if you struggle with maintaining relationships, I want you to think back and reflect and go in my family. Is this a pattern? Is this a pattern that runs for my family? When you look at your uncles, when you look at your nieces, when you when you look at your when you look at your grandfather, when you look at everyone in your family, are these generational patterns that you are sleepwalking into and coping and pasting them in your life? And on the next slide, sometimes when I meet people and I talk to people whether you're Christian or not, but especially Christians, they would ask this Is it a sin to watch the Odyssey? Is it you can set whatever?

Is it a sin to watch Game of Thrones? Is it a sin to go to the cinema? Is it a sin to drink Heineken? Is it a sin to play Might I say to you like on the next that question misses the mark because what might be okay for John to do might not be okay for Sarah to do because of the different influencing factors that we have in our lives. Like so for instance if you come from a family where people have gambled away all their wealth don't be asking is it wrong to play the lottery is it wrong to do no you need to go given my life the specific patterns that I see what choices are going to help me to what God is calling you to become. So you see the brothers didn't pay heed to the influencing factors in their lives and that led them to become like animals and that's not what we want to be.

We don't want to be like animals. We want to become what God has called us to be. So on the next slide, this is where the title contrarian comes in. So contrarian is a person who deliberately take an opposing view or rejects the popular opinion of the majority. So if you're in a family where you just see brokenness and brokenness and brokenness, you see abs and fathers, abs and fathers, abs and fathers, you see broken marriages, broken marriages, you see alcoholism, alcoholism, you see gambling, gambling. If you see that you need to be a contrarian and not become like a wild ferocious animal, but become what God has called you to be.

So in the next before you think it's all doom and gloom, it's not all doom and gloom because patterns can be broken. And Joseph is the first person we will see as we go through this series who breaks the pattern. He breaks the pattern of deception. He breaks the pattern of hatred. He breaks these generational patterns so that the people after him have better patterns to follow. So don't think it's all doom and gloom that you just sleepwalk into these things.

There is hope. The evangelist Billy Graham says this. No matter who you are or what your life has been like so far, the rest of your life's journey can be different. With God's help, you can begin again. You don't have to succumb to these patterns. And then on the next slide.

So that's why in the next four or five weeks I'm not we're not committing to four or five. So so four or five weeks we see we're going to be looking at Joseph's life. We're going to see that God is shaping people to become different. And even in that, we're going to see the brothers themselves are going to come to a point where they're going to change from behaving like wild to be something different when they witness what Joseph So we're saying this is a series about becoming. We don't want to be wild animals. We want to be people who are shaped by God.

We're going to be people who are not we're going to break the pattern. We're going to be contrarians. The past does not define us. It does not rule us. It does not have mastery over us. We're going to be people who choose integrity.

We're going to be people who are going to be faithful in suffering. And we're going to be people of true repentance. And we're going to be people who forgive. And then I want to go on the next slide. This series is about God is more interested in who you're becoming than where you are going. Sometimes as Christians, we think about heaven.

We think about the destination of heaven and there is a place for that. But God is more interested in who you become on that journey. Otherwise, you're going to hate it in heaven. Right? If you're some if you've got some if you're not sanctified, if you do not become Christlike, you're going to get to heaven and they're going to be people like Jesus and you're going to hate it over there because you have not walked your odyssey, your journey well. So we need to become who God is calling us to be and not be wild animals.

And on the next slide so before I read out this slide I want to I want to finish up with this illustration. I'm sure you've heard about compound interest. You know who's it that say it? Einstein or Benjamin Franklin one of them say that compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world you know so the person who doesn't understand it will pay it will pay will pay it and the person who understands it will gain from it but the thing is when we think about compound interest we usually think about in financial terms and that's okay but we need to think about compound in the sense of the decisions that we make so if we think about compound interest, right? If you have compound interest on credit card debt, you're in trouble because you borrow 5,000 and let's say you just pay the minimum. The 5,000 doesn't seem to ever go down, right?

It's like it goes up and up and up and up. Why? Because you are paying for compound interest. Or maybe you borrowed a loan for something like you got a mortgage. They give you 2,000 by the end of the mortgage you've paid like six no sorry not 2,000 200,000 you borrow 200,000 but by the end of the life of the mortgage you've paid like 600,000. You're like what the heck is going on?

Compound interest. Compound interest is what's going on, right? It's interest upon interest upon interest. But here's the thing. If you're a savvy investor, you can apply the same principle of compound interest to your savings. If you invest in shares and companies, those shares keeps growing.

Oh my goodness. If you if you have bought Amazon in like 2000 when everything was like the world was crashing, you'll be a gazillionaire right now. Why? What's happening? Compound interest. So I want us to think the same thing when it comes to our decisions.

And I want to ask you Who you become tomorrow is simply the compound interest on the small choices you make today in light of the influencing factors. I didn't put that because then it would be too long. So you're always going to have those influencing factors be it family be where you live be between the environment you find yourself. Always going to have that. But you need to make decisions that come that compounds for you. Not decisions that compounds for the house, for the casino.

Make decisions that compound for you. I believe that's the last slide. I don't Is there another slide, Michael? Okay. Are your choices compounding for you? Are they compounding against you?

Like literally this is this is how you break generational cycles, generational dynamics. You see them. So you see what you don't want to be that's that's the destination. But honestly, how you get to not be that what that you do not want to be is through daily choices. Because if you're not wise in the daily choices, I guarantee you In years time, you'll be the person that you did not want to be. I believe this is the last one.

Is there another No. All right. All right. All right. So, I'll just pray for us to finish. Yeah.

So, we're really excited about this series because sometimes we preach we preach in isolation, but this is going to be actually a story. So we left Joseph being sold in slavery. We're going to pick up from there and actually follow his journey and actually see that he himself becomes something else. So becoming is not necessarily that you're moving away from sin. It could just be moving away from it could just be growing. Think about Joseph.

He hadn't done anything sinful but I might say he was unwise. You know, like just in the sense of when you get dreams, this is this is also an aside. This is a bonus, by the way. You know, you can take this to the bank. If you have a dream right now, if it's in its infancy, don't tell people, you know, like when it's still new, right? You're trying to start a new company, you're trying to go back to college, you're trying to do something, it's still a dream, it's still new.

If you tell it too quickly, people will argue against that. Oh, you want to go back to school at your age? Oh, who would do that? You know, so when it's still small, don't tell it. When you've already enrolled in college and you're going to be starting in a month's time. Ah, guess what, guys?

I'm going back to college. They don't say nothing. They don't say nothing. So, that's just that's just an aside. That's just an aside. But like the thing with Joseph, you can see that he's young.

He's a bit naive because he keeps telling these dreams to his brothers, the dreams are quite obvious and the brothers are already mad at him. They already kind of hating him for they should really be taking it up with the father, but they're taking it up with Joseph. And Joseph tells him the dream. Okay, maybe tell them the first one, but when the second one happens, maybe don't tell him that the sun and the moon and the stars would bow down to me, right? Just kind of keep that to yourself. And then when that happens, you're like, "Ah, guys, I actually had a dream." So in him you actually see a growing because later in life, not to spoil it, but later on Joseph is going to see his brothers, but this time he's much wiser.

He just doesn't reveal himself and goes, "Tada! Here I am." He doesn't do that. He actually tests them to see have they when he sees that they have changed does he reveal himself. So even he becomes much wiser.