DAY 39: Why does their life look easier?

What do you do when when their life it just looks easier? Not just different, easier, cleaner, faster, more settled. You think like you you look at their family and you it just seems more steady, more stable. Their money seems to just flow. They never seem to have a money issue. Financial security never never a big deal for them. Their doors just seem to fling wide open, and that whole thing, wherever God closes a door, he'll open a window, their windows are wide open, doors wide open. Their platform seems larger, they seem to have more easy influence over them. Children seem to be easier to raise, their path seems obvious. There's no like, hmm, I wonder what I should do. And you're still wrestling. You're still in the midst of wrestling, wrestling with grief. You're grinding it out through grief, forcing yourself to get up out that bed every day. You've taken to the bed and you force yourself out of it. Grief just overwhelms. Obedience. You're still wrestling with obedience, you're wrestling with connection or correction. You're waiting and waiting and waiting, waiting. You feel like I just I'm the most patient person on the planet. Well, and then you have so many unanswered questions. What do you do? What do you do? What do you do when you're trying to follow God? You're trying. You you straight up. You're giving it everything you got. You don't understand. You don't understand why it's so much harder for you. You look at them, back at you. Look at them, back at you, look at them, and then back at you. And back at them. Right? What do you do when you're trying to follow God and someone else? They just seem to be passing you while you're still being formed. That's the wound underneath. That's the wound underneath Genesis thirty-six. At first glance, Genesis thirty-six looks like a list of names. When we read through these types of things, we're we're too quick. Too quick to go. Oh, I don't like to read this book, this chapter of Matthew, because what's boring? I don't like to read it. It's boring. It's just a bunch of names. If we get to Genesis 36, well, I'm not reading that. I'll just assume, I'll stipulate. Begat and so-and-so, and this and that. No. That's why. That's why we're taking you through this the way that we are. That's why. If you miss it, you've missed everything. By the way, let me say this. Welcome by to everyone, both new and and uh and veteran. Good, thank you, brother. Thank you, all of you, for letting me know. I don't know what happened. Just the mic shut off. I think it had to do with ECAM. Doesn't matter. Anyway, um, welcome to everybody. I appreciate you being here. Lovely. Lovely that you're here. So my approach is different, and I get it. You feel probably like you'd like to pick up the pace a little bit. Right? If you I just I just want to put this out there to you. If you come, if you're coming here and you're like, oh, through the Bible in the year, I'd like to sign up for that. Um, this is different. This is way different. We're not taking boxes here, we're going back to the ancient Near Eastern language, culture, and context. We are we're learning what actually happened then and why. Who was talking, who was hearing. And then we tether that to what each of us are going through and figure out what truths, what truths. I try so hard not to compare my life to others. Hard to do in a world that yells, look at me. God has shown me that mentality is outside of his amen. Amen. Yeah, of course. Genesis, at first glance, Genesis 30. Genesis 36 just looks like a list of names. If you're just flying through. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Stenson. You waited a long time to be born. I hear you. I see what's coming. At first glance, it does. It just looks like a bunch of names. Esau's wives, Esau's sons, Esau's chiefs, Esau's clans, Esau's kings. You know, I'm I go to breakfast. As soon as I leave here, I as soon as I finish this, I go to breakfast on Fridays with my buddies. And uh, and if there's somebody new there, it's hey you doing, I'm I'm Sean. Sean, hey you doing? I'm Sean, I'm Sean. You know, and then I don't know. It's hard to remember the names. I have a brain injury, so it's whole years that are gone. Literally. But names. Names are important, and they're really important back then, but they give us a thread to pull on. Esau's wives, Esau's sons, Esau's chiefs, Esau's clans, Esau's kings. Names most people struggle to pronounce. You know the deal. You know, who's a who's a w Red that dude. You know what I mean? What the what the you can't say it. It's hard, it's an engineer's name. Details most people just rush through. Don't rush, don't rush. If I can encourage you in any way, don't rush. You're gonna miss it. Because Genesis 36, it asks a question real people still feel. What if the person outside the covenant line appears to prosper faster than the person carrying the promise? You see where I'm going. Well, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I've turned my whole life around. I've put myself through a lot of struggle here. How come? I mean, why? If it's no easier, why? I don't I don't get it. Why is that family doing better than us? Esau becomes Edom. His descendants multiply. His chiefs are named, his territory is described, his kings appear before Israel as kings. Now let me say it again. Let me say it again with a little different emphasis and see if you pick it up. The subtle difference. They're named. His territory is described, his kings appear before Israel as kings, and Jacob? Well, Jacob's family is still complicated. Rachel has died, Reuben has sinned, Dinah has been wounded, Simeon and Levi have brought violence into the story. Isaac has been buried, Joseph's trouble is about to begin. So here's the question for your heart. Where are you tempted? Where are you tempted to believe God's forgotten you? Because someone else's life looks easier. Welcome back to Through the Bible and a year walking the story of God. I'm Dr. Sean. And this is True Word Faith for Life with Dr. Sean. Today we're walking through Genesis 36, 1 through 43. Before we go further, my book. True Word Faith for Life. It's available in the store, TrueWordFaithforLife.com. It's available everywhere. Books are sold, but that's where we do the best because more money goes to the ministry. And it oddly, it doesn't get to you much faster ordering through like the A-word and all that. So we're glad to have you. By the way, a great repository of uh incredible, incredible things, resources for you. True WordFaithforLife.com. Check out the blog. If you if you read the blog and then just keep scrolling, you're gonna see the study guide. So I have great joy if you use that for your uh Bible study or your devotional group or or just maybe you just want to use it yourself. The only thing I ask is if you use it, if you copy and paste, I made it so it's copy and pasteable. But if you use it, everything I do is copyrighted. So I would really appreciate it if you just copy that copyright. And when you go to your coffee group or your book group or whatever, just take that with it. That's all I ask. I don't ask for any money. Spiritual battle. It's always been a spiritual battle from day one. Listen, I I can identify with that. I don't know your life, but I'm I'm just telling you, I can identify with that. Look, this is this book that I wrote, it's the second book. True Word Faith for Life. It helps you stop surviving on the little bitty religious fragments. Religious fragments. It helps you start walking the truth of God's word with courage, clarity, and faith for today's real life. I wrote it for real people. It's easiest pie to read. Easiest pie. Don't drink your coffee while you don't. I mean, drink, swallow, then read. I don't get sued for you spitting out coffee through your nose, because it will make you laugh. But you'll also need a box of these. Because it'll also make you cry. So today's passage, not about genealogy. It's not about genealogy. It's not. And that matters. It's it's look, genius. There's a genealogy there, of course. Well, it definitely matters. Genealogies aren't just filler. Listen, I need I need um 1,500 more words from you, uh, Moses. I need 1,500 words. Can you get me 1,500 words by noon o'clock? Because um, I need 1,500 words. I told you what the deadline was and how much you had to write. You got like 300 words. Let's um go in a little bit detail here because we need to fill some pages. Uh advertising has been so. Okay? Can you get to it? That's not how it went. They're not filler for the Bible. Look, it's easy. We don't, we're not a real genealogy-oriented bunch, right? That's not who we are. That's not how we roll. But here's the reality. We skim, our brain goes, boop. Why? Because everything is summarized for us. It's condensed. They're not filler. They're covenant memory. They tell us who belongs to whom, where peoples came from, how promises and conflicts unfold across generations, and how God's story moves through real families like yours, real lands, real names and real history. Genesis 36 isn't, it's not wasted space. And I'm going to tell you, what, you know, my first doctorate was so intense. Until you find yourself having to read massive amounts. And you've and you just can't read it. You have to take it in. Why you want to, you just want to run through it as quickly as you can. And skim if you have to. Why? Because you got so much to read. So when you come to this, you're like, oh, I'm gonna skim. Skim button. Boop. No. Can't do it. I learned you can't do it. It's not wasted space, Genesis 36. It's the record of Esau's line, and it teaches us something. Many modern believers, many modern followers of the way, someone asked, Who are we? Who am I? I'm a follower of the way. I'm a beggar who tells other beggars where I found bread. Bottom line. So I believe that this is teaching us something that we desperately need, especially in the modern world. So don't confuse visible establishment with covenant fulfillment. So we're gonna breathe it in, and here we go. Genesis 36 begins. These are the generations of Esau, that is Edom. That statement frames the chapter. Did you miss it? You would have if you were trying to tick boxes. Esau is Edom, the brother of Jacob, becomes the father of a people who were lay they will later stand in a long and painful relationship with Israel. Edom isn't just a family footnote. Edom will matter. Edom will appear again in Israel's story. Just you wait and see. Sometimes as kin, sometimes as neighbor, sometimes as opponent, sometimes as a warning. So Genesis pauses to show us Esau's line. Because Jacob, well, it doesn't matter because Jacob carries the covenant promise. This is why when people say, Well, why are you so stuck in the Old Testament? Come on, why are you always using these Hebrew and Aramaic and all that? You know, the New Testament was written in Greek, you know, and the Lord, the Jesus is the only important thing. Oh my, you don't understand. You don't understand. You will not, you cannot possibly understand how important Yeshua. Can't understand Jesus until you understand this. Your faith is thin and it's weak and it's fragile. And it's all predicated on feeling and what you can get and what he will do for you. So Genesis pauses to show us Esau's line, and and it's not. It's not pretending Esau doesn't matter because Jacob carries the covenant promise. Wait a second. Jacob. Israel. Oh why don't we just skip to him? I mean, that's the one that matters, right? That's the one that matters. Why wouldn't we just skip to him? His descendants matter. His land matters. His choices matter. But his line isn't the same as the covenant line through which God will carry the Abrahamic promise toward Israel, David, and ultimately Yeshua. And that distinction matters. Every person has a dignity. Every person. Every person has dignity. Every people group matters. But not every line has the same covenant role in the biblical story. Here we go. The chapter names Esau's wives and children. We're reminded that Esau's marriages connected him with the surrounding peoples, you know, your Marian peoples. And then that includes Canaanite and other regional family lines. Back in Genesis, Esau's marriages grieved Isaac and Rebekah. This wasn't some mere parental preference, it was covenant concern. And those little bits and pieces mattered. They mattered. Territorial gods, clan loyalties, fertility religion. In competing alliances, marriage was never just romance in the ancient Near Eastern world. Marriages connected households. Linked inheritance. It joined families, gods, economies, futures, and land claims. Wasn't just about, oh, she's cute. Oh, he's cute. He's good looking. He's got a good job. No, it wasn't about that. Way deeper. Like it or don't. Like it or don't, that's how it was. We can't skip over it because it matters. And it plays a very important role. So it joined families, gods, economies, futures, and land claims. So when Genesis tracks Esau's family line, it's tracking more than just biology. It's tracking identity. It's showing us how a people took shape. A people who would become very important to us. Then we read that Esau took his wives, sons, daughters, household members, livestock beasts, and property and went into a land away from Jacob Y. Because their possessions were too great for them to dwell together. The land couldn't support both households. This echoes Abraham and Lot, remember? You can listen free, you go back. Well, on day 39, but you can you can go back to day one. If you prefer audio only and you don't want to see this face, who could blame you? Um you can just go to your favorite listening place for audio podcasts. I'm on all of them. Click on the follow or subscribe. Maybe click on the bell, maybe do a review. I feel like. It's up to you. I can't force you. I wouldn't anyway. So or you can go to truewordfaithforlife.com, truewordfaithforlife.com, and click on the little audio deal. It's easy peasy. You can just listen. It's free. Everything's free. Except for my book, you got to pay for that. Because I have to pay for it. So the thing is, is when households get too large, they separation becomes necessary. But here the separation also serves the covenant story. It's not just, oh, well, you know, you've got too many cows, I've got too many cows, you've got too many. This, and you've, you know, sloths, and I've got too many sloths, and you know how much they eat.

Yeah.

No. No. It's way bigger than that. Esau moves away. Because the separation serves the covenant story. We don't see it at the time. They didn't see it. They're living through it. Don't be so hard on them. We have the benefit of so many things, so many tools. But we look back at them with such arrogance and we say, oh man. Those people are so stupid. The disciples, how did they not know? Well, we're reading the book and we can skip ahead. They couldn't. Couldn't skip ahead years. Yeshua was totally different. It was a shocking, wild thing. Are you hearing me? It was wild. And it wasn't something that could just. Look, Esau was successful. He was extremely successful. Some people paint it as though he was some sort of black sheep and some sort of weirdo. Esau was very, very successful. So he becomes established in seer. Jacob carries the covenant line in Canaan. That's important because movement can look like success, right? Say, well, we keep moving. I keep moving. We think it's success. I know a family that uh they grew they grew up in a small house with a bunch of bunch of kids. Bunch. Dad had a regular job, mom had a regular job. She worked part-time. And but they they this house was very minimal. They had nothing fancy. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing extra, right? The kids, they all went to public school. They all went to public school. And they didn't seem to have much. They all seemed so happy. It was incredible to watch. Other families were far more successful. They were. They had more stuff, they had newer cars. And about every five years they moved. Bigger house. Better neighborhood. More land. More features. And boy, did they dress nice. The girls were beautiful and the sons were handsome and they dressed like models. Know anybody like that? Maybe it was your family. No reason to feel guilty about that. You grew up where you grew up, how you grew up. Poor or rich, you had no choice in the matter. Listen, I'd like to go over to the rich family. I don't like living poor. Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome. It's my blessing. I'm blessed to be able to do it. XBlue3 underscore Wolf X. These names are amazing. Hello, Dr. Sean Michael Greener. Thank you for being online. Thank you for taking time to spread the Lord's word. Wow, you're you're most welcome. You're most welcome. It's an honor of a lifetime. Thank you for being here to listen. Thank you to all of you. Look, these family, this one in particular I'm thinking of, you know, you couldn't help but look at them and admire them. All the latest clothes, too. And, you know, when the kids would turn 16, they got like BMWs and Mercedes and stuff like that. I mean, no kidding. There was no passing down. Everybody got new. We didn't. You absolutely may ask for a prayer request. For sure. But I tell you what, I would love for you to do. I would love for you to send a um send a note. If you have prayer requests, send them to me. I love to pray. My wife can tell you, I pray for hours a day. Not like I'm any big deal or having me pray for you is any better than anybody else. But I do. And it's a powerful part, I think, of of our day. And so uh true wordfaithforlife.com slash contact. Send me that and um I'll add you to my daily prayer deal. Never hesitate to ask. So this family, I mean to tell you, they're they are by all intents, you just look at them and you envy them. Right? Nicole says envy is a slippery slope. Oh, amen, amen, sister. By the way, that sister gets up wee hours of the morning in order to listen live. God bless you. You know, the thing is, is I looked at this family and with envy, my family was jacked up. We had nothing, nothing new. I work, I wore clothes. My brother is, I don't know how many years older than me. He's in his, he's in his late 70s now. I'm 60. I'll be 61 in September. And so he's a lot older than me. I mean, he graduated in 73. I graduated in 65. Or I was born in 65, that'll tell you. He graduated from high school in 73. My sister's old enough to be my mother. Oh, pray my children will love me again. Vicky says in chat, Oh my dear. Send that to me. Send me your story. True WordFaithforLife.com slash contact. I kid you not. I will pray for you. So one by one, the kids started to look different. They just didn't seem the same. They never seemed happy to me. They seemed to have a lot, but they never seemed happy. Despite all that stuff, they never seemed happy. And the new houses and where they went on vacation over the summers, I mean the vacations were stuff of legend. Stuff of legend. I didn't go on vacation, I worked. One by one. The children in the family. Alcohol. Pregnancies, abortions. More pregnancies, more abortions. One daughter, I knew very well. Five abortions. They were miserable. Mom and dad. Hey. X Blue says, I will certainly send them the prayer request, if I may share just a little bit. My girlfriend of two years broke up with me today, and I've shared my whole world with her, and she just left today. No goodbye. Well, certainly I don't know your story. I don't know your life. But every loss is huge, but when it's somebody that has been so important to you, absolutely. Certainly that hurts. Every relationship. Well, in this case, uh in this family, the mom, she starts to change. She looks different. She starts looking sickly. She was beautiful. She was a beautiful woman. The dad starts to look different. Turns out they were all alcoholics, including the children. Crashing cars. Then losing houses. Then losing reputations. Don't don't envy. Don't envy. You don't know their life. You don't know their story. And it turned out to be an utter disaster. I wasn't happy about it. I was sad about it. I'm not saying we were some happy bunch, because we we most assuredly were not. But then I knew other families that they were they were so happy. They had nothing. They all lived in a tiny little house. They never moved. Some of the kids ended up living in the house. You know, once the parents died, they they they I mean it was kind of cool. Movement can look like success, folks. Esau had territory, he had growth. Esau had visible establishment. Jacob had promise. Here's your promise. Listen, for Christmas this year, I'm gonna write this out here for you. I mean, it's a promise. Promise right here. You put this in your pocket, okay? Okay, Jacob. You put this in your pocket, little Israel. You put this in your pocket and you just go, and that's what you'll have. You'll have that. And it's better than any nice car or home or lights a candle or anything. Great job. No. Here, here, Jacob, here's your promise. Wasn't like that. Promise doesn't always look impressive in the moment. Sometimes promise looks slower. Sometimes promise looks very fragile. And sometimes promise looks like a tent instead of a throne. Sometimes promise looks like grief, waiting in unfinished formation. So this is where Genesis becomes painfully modern. Painfully modern. You look at someone else's life and you think they're already there. Their business is growing, their family looks stable, their platform is bigger, their money came faster, their children seem easier and more successful. Look at what their kids done. Look at that. This one's a doctor, this one's a uh architect, this one owns a law firm. This one owns of a company, a huge company. Their doors open sooner, their life looks cleaner, and yours? Well, you're still healing. You're still waiting, you're still wrestling, you're still trying to obey, you're still burying idols, you're still rebuilding after grief, you're still asking God for wisdom, you're still wondering why covenant obedience sometimes feels harder than casual success. Because most often it is. Tells you not to measure covenant faithfulness by speed. Not every fast road is the right road. Not every settled life is the promised life. Not every visible success is shalom. This chapter lists eight, or no, no, I don't know, honey. This chapter lists chiefs from Esau's sons. Chiefs, clan leaders, recognized authority, winners, social structure, political strength. Edom is becoming organized. And this isn't this isn't some random family expansion. This is the formation of a people. They're a people, too. The ancient Near Eastern world, chiefs and clans, they meant leadership, territory, protection, military potential, inheritance, and identity. Esau's line looks strong, looks stable, looks well established. Then again, we have to feel the tension. Israel does not yet have kings. Jacob's family isn't yet a nation. The descendants of Jacob will eventually go down into Egypt. They will be enslaved. Excuse me. Oh, God bless you. I asked the person's permission, I didn't say their name, but I reached out to them through our school page and I asked, I said, hey, your story is powerful. And she's come to Christ. And she just said tears, tears, and more tears. God bless you. I know it wasn't easy. Everybody thought it was easy for you. Yeah. Listen, the descendants of Jacob will eventually go down into Egypt, and they're going to be enslaved. And they're going to cry out under oppression. And they're going to need deliverance. They will wander and they will wait, and yet they are the covenant people. That should correct our shallow reading of blessing. Blessing isn't always immediate comfort. Blessing isn't always quick visibility. Blessing isn't always public status. Covenant blessing often includes formation before fulfillment. So then Genesis 36 names the sons of Seir the Horite and the inhabitants of the land. And that detail matters because Esau's descendants didn't emerge in an empty world. They became connected to the existing peoples of Seir. The biblical world was full of tribes and clans and territorial identities and marriage alliances and migrations and conflicts. No one lived in abstraction. Land mattered, kinship mattered, boundaries mattered, names mattered. So when Scripture gives us these lists, it's grounding the story in the real world. In the real world that they're living right then. And our world. God's word isn't some floating above history word. It's it doesn't just enter history, it is history. It names households, it tracks people, it remembers places, it knows the difference between Jacob and Esau, Israel and Edom, promise and proximity. This is one of the reasons we have to read the Bible in context. You know, if we flatten all of these names into old Bible information, Old Testament superfluous details, well, we miss the covenant architecture of the story, and when we do that, we miss not only our present, but our future. So then comes one of the most striking sections of this chapter. Genesis says there are, these are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the Israelites. Do you hear that? Edom had kings before Israelite kings. That's not a throwaway line. It's a theological tension. The line outside covenant kingship promise appears politically advanced before Israel. We experience that now. Hmm? Do we not? Edom looks ahead. Israel looks behind. Edom as kings. Israel is patriarchs and tents in trouble. Edom has visible, visible monarchy. Israel has promise waiting for its time. This is the kind of thing that can make faithful people stumble. Why do they seem ahead? Why do they get there first? Why does their life look more organized? Why does their success seem faster? Why does the person who's not trying to obey God seem to arrive before the person who is? Genesis 36 quietly answers. First isn't always fullest. Fast isn't always faithful, and visible power isn't always covenant purpose, my friend, from high school, whose family seemed to have it all together. Eventually that family fell apart. Divorce after divorce, sickness, death, embarrassment, poverty of all kinds. Look, you can look at all these people, and you can say they have all this. They got it easy. The world worships visible momentum. Even churches, even pastors, they worship numbers, titles, statuses, rankings, engagement, followers, promotions, houses, cars, platforms, metrics. Metrics. We think if something is bigger, it must be blessed. If something is faster, it must be favored. If something is more visible, well, then they must be more important. But the Bible keeps warning us. Don't confuse visibility with covenant weight. Edom had kings before Israel, but Messiah doesn't come through Edom. Yeshua comes through Jacob's line. Remember, we we we pitied Leah. We pitied her for good reason. Her dad paid her. Her out and snuck her into the tent and tricked Jacob. We look at Rachel. Rachel's beautiful. Rachel's chosen every time. And we look down a little bit on Leah and go, poor Leah. And yet, through Leah, through her line, not Rachel's, through Leah's line comes Yeshua. Yeshua comes through Jacob's line, through Israel, through Judah, through David, through the promise God carried across centuries. That line appeared established. Look, how do I put this? That line that appeared, appeared established first. It wasn't the line through which God carried the messianic promise. The shinier story wasn't the messianic story. The early kings were not the final king. So let's be careful here. I don't want to be rude or ignorant here. This doesn't mean every successful person outside of your path is evil. I'm thinking of a family right now that their children have been very successful. They uh both of them started with very humble beginnings. They're extremely successful people, and they are the best people you ever meet in your life. It's amazing. They're amazing people. They're just amazing people. Nicole says, this made me stumble. I was angry after loss and stepped away from God, but reality is without Christ I was dark, lost, and alone. God had had to let me learn that. It taught me true surrender and depth of grace. Amen. Prayer isn't asking for the easy path. It's asking for a strong back. Look, don't look at every single successful person outside of your path. Don't equate them with evil. Money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil. It doesn't mean you should despise someone else's prosperity. It doesn't mean that you should comfort your insecurity by assuming God is against everyone who seems ahead of you. That's not the point. And it's not the truth. Genesis 36 isn't permission to despise people who prosper. It's an invitation to stop letting their prosperity define your trust in God. The point is deeper and it's cleaner. Don't measure your obedience by comparison. Don't interpret God's faithfulness through someone else's timeline. Don't assume delay means abandonment. Don't assume hiddenness means insignificance. Don't assume God has failed because someone else's story looked easier. You don't know what their story is for. You don't know their life. You don't know what God is forming in yours. You don't know what covenant weight you're carrying through your tears. Genesis 36 also reminds us that God keeps his word in more ways than one. Esau was blessed in a real way. Back in Genesis 27, Isaac spoke over Esau too. Isaac would live away from the richness of the land in some sense. Yet he would also become a people with power and territory. God's providence still operates in Esau's line, and that matters because the Bible isn't simplistic. God's covenant, but you might be saying, look, I don't understand all this. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm doing this. So you can. The Bible isn't. It's not simplistic. God's covenant election of Jacob doesn't mean Esau vanishes from history. He was real. God's special promise to Israel doesn't mean other peoples are unreal. I think people hate Israel. It's just it's jealousy. It's sad to me. It's tragic to me. How could they be so successful? How could they have what they have? They're a tiny nation. Size of New Jersey. Enemies all around them. How could they be so successful? Have to be dirty, they have to be bad. God's special promise to Israel doesn't mean other peoples are unreal, unimportant, or outside his sovereign concern. But the covenant line has a particular role. Through Abraham's seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed. That promise narrows through Isaac, then Jacob, then Judah, then David, then Messiah. Election in Scripture isn't God saying nobody else matters. Only these people. No. That's not how election works. It's God choosing a line through which blessings will reach the nations, and that is why Yeshua matters for the whole world. So Genesis 36 teaches us how to hold two truths at the same time. Esau's line is real, and Jacob's line is covenantal. Edom may look established early, but Israel may still be under formation. Visible kings may rise in Sierra before kings rise in Israel, and God's promise is still not in danger. That's the kind of biblical maturity we need. God's plan isn't fragile. He isn't panicking because someone else seems ahead of us. That's reality. That's reality. He plays the long game because God is Lord over generations. We panic because we see snapshots. God reigns because he sees the whole story. Some of you are living in snapshots right now. You're living in a snapshot. You're looking at one season. One, one comparison, one delay, one closed door, one family member's success, one friend's marriage, one competitor's growth, one person's platform, one neighbor's ease, and you're drawing conclusions about God from a partial picture. Don't do that. I told you about my friend. Everyone thought she had it made. Snapshots lie when they pretend to be the whole story. Genesis 36 is a whole chapter reminding you that a line can look impressive and still not be the line through which God is carrying the deepest promise. Your life may look slower because God is forming something heavier. Your path may look harder because God is working deeper. Your obedience may feel hidden because roots grow underground before the fruit shows above ground. And all of this, every bit of it, points us to Yeshua. Yeshua. Glory to God. Why? Because Yeshua didn't come through the line that looked politically impressive first. He came through the covenant line. He came through Israel, he came through Judah, he came through David. He came into the world not as a king in a palace, but as a little child in Bethlehem. Not with Edomite royal display, but with Roman oppression. He didn't come with Roman military force. He was born into oppression. Not with the kind of visible power the world recognizes. He came up in humility. He grew up in obscurity. He carried the kingdom of God without the machinery of worldly power. He was rejected, crucified, buried, and raised. And now he is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords. And that is the great reversal. The kingdom of God doesn't need to look impressive to be unstoppable. So here's the question: Where are you comparing your covenant walk to someone else's visible success? Where are you, assuming God is less faithful because your road is slower? Your road is slower. Where are you letting someone else's timeline poison your trust? Where are you calling your hidden season failure? But it may actually be formation. Here's the choice. Here are your choice heads. You can live by comparison, certainly you can. Or you can live by covenant. You can measure your life by what appears faster. Or you can trust God, the God, who works across generations. You can envy. You can. You can envy sauce chiefs and kings, or you can stay faithful with Jacob's God. And that faithfulness has to become concrete. So today, don't feed the comparison. Don't check the profile that always leaves you better. Oh, they have they post something stupid and there's nine million likes. Don't rehearse the story that God has been better to someone else than he has been to you. Don't don't punish your spouse, your children, your friends, your church, or yourself because your life doesn't look like somebody else's life. Instead, do something holy and difficult. Bless the person you are tempted to resent. Thank God for what He has entrusted to you. Name the place where you feel delayed. Put that place before the Father honestly, then obey the next clear thing. Make the apology. Have the conversation. Close the app. Pray the prayer. Get back to the work. Stop measuring your calling or your blessing by someone else's calendar. Don't despise small beginnings. Don't panic over hidden formation. Don't let someone else's success make you bitter. Don't confuse visual, visible establishment with covenant destiny. Walk faithfully. Walk faithfully. Obey today. Trust and obey today. Trust God's timing today. Let him form what he promised. And remember this. The Messiah didn't come through that line that looked impressive first. He came through the line that God chose, carried, corrected, and preserved. And maybe this is for you where salvation becomes personal today. Because sin doesn't only show up as rebellion. Sometimes sin shows up as comparison, envy, bitterness, resentment, distrust, that quiet accusation in the soul that says, God, you have been better to them than you've been to me. They're not doing anything you're saying to do. And when that accusation takes root, when that accusation takes root, it does something deadly. It makes the father look unfaithful. It makes obedience look foolish. It makes someone else's life the measure of your worth. But Yeshua came to rescue us from that slavery too. He came to forgive sin, hurts habits, and hangups. He came to heal envy. He came to break comparison. He came to bring us home to the Father, where our worth is not measured by someone else's timeline, someone else's successes, or someone else's story. If today you know that you've been living by comparison instead of trust, come home. If you've been measuring God's goodness by someone else's life, come home. If you're tired of envy stealing your peace, come home. I'm gonna say this very quickly. I won't belabor it. I'm gonna give you an opportunity to pray here in just a second. We can't look with envy. His name is Braxton. And his family, he's a well-known racing family, Nascar. And Braxton raced everything, go-karts and all this stuff. I mean, he he and he and he proved very talented. And he worked his way up, and now he's driving full-size cars. And people he would drive in races his dad raced, and they would be one and two. Oh, but he has all the equipment. He has every best thing. Well, his dad is rich, his dad has all the connections. Will most assuredly be a Hall of Fame driver. No doubt. Yesterday at 41 years old. Over a couple of days he took quite ill. And yesterday at 41 years old, a healthy, extremely fit man. The father of not just that little boy who people envied and resented. He died. He started off the day. Hey, better go take a look at this. Have a little trouble. And by the early evening, he was gone. There's someone who listens to this. His sweet daughter took ill. Sixteen years old. Took ill. And within a matter of hours, she was gone. Selfie. I was on my way home. I was gonna eat dinner. And at 618, everything changed. Your life is not guaranteed to you tomorrow, this afternoon, this next minute, not guaranteed to you. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just trying to inform you. Prayer isn't asking for an easy journey. It's asking for a strong back. And let me tell you something. You don't have forever to make this decision. I want you to pray this with me. Father, I know I've done wrong things. I've sinned against you, and I need your mercy. I believe Jesus died for me, was buried, and rose again. Today I turn from my sin, my habits, my hang-ups, my hurts, and I place my trust in Him as my Lord and as my King. Please forgive me. Make me new and fill me with your Spirit. From this day forward, I want to follow you in Jesus' name. Amen. Listen, if you prayed that prayer, if you prayed that prayer, you've made the most important decision you will ever make. And you don't have to walk the road alone. I'll help you. I've given the website a million times already. True Word Faith for Life. We don't track you. I don't even know how to do that. True WordFaithforLife.com. True WordFaithforLife.com. Get a hold of me. Contact up at the top. Easy peasy. Little banner thing, gray banner thing on the right. You can leave me a voice message there, but and it's free. I pay for it so you don't have to, but you click on that. You have two minutes. It's your two minutes. Make it count. As soon as I receive your message, I will reach out to you. The countless number who have know that I'm telling the truth. I'll help you, I promise. Day by day, you aren't alone. All you need to do is ask. Look, their life may look easier. Their success may look louder. But visible success isn't the same as covenant destiny. Don't let comparison steal your joy. Comparison is the thief of joy. It is also the thief of peace. Of shalom. Don't let delay poison your trust. Don't let someone else's timeline become your theology. God is faithful in the hidden moments. God is faithful in the hidden years. God is faithful in the slow work. God is faithful across generations, and the promise he carries may be deeper than anything you can measure today. Stay faithful. Stay humble. Stay free from envy. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not late. And in Yeshua, the covenant story reaches farther than any human success ever could. Tomorrow I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna have a special Memorial Day message for you. It is a powerful observance for me, for there are many of my friends and colleagues who I have visited in Orlington. If you know, you know. If this message touched your heart, share it. It's easy. Share the link. Post the link. You never know. And now, until Sunday at 6.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, may Adunai bless you and keep you. May Adonai make his face to shine upon you and show you his grace. May Adunai lift his face towards you and give you shalom. Shalom Bishim Yeshua. This has been True Word, Faith for Life with Dr. Sean. For more teachings, go to True Word FaithforLi.com until Sunday at 6 30. Shalom Shalom. Shabbat Shalom.