TD Jakes - Rightfully Mine
God often reverses human order to fulfill His prophecy—just as He declared the older would serve the younger with Jacob and Esau—showing that the blessing and birthright truly belong to whom He chooses, and through wrestling with God, Jacob discovers his true identity as Israel, a prince with a divine destiny that no past mistake or human odds can disqualify.
The Reversal of Natural Order
Nature teaches, history teaches, the period teaches that the firstborn should have the right to reign. And so, when they brought Esau to his father, Isaac, Isaac loved Esau, but God hated him. Put a pin right there. Why does God hate Esau? That is a strong word. Why does God hate Esau? Now, add that to Jacob pulling at him, coming out of the womb, and they called him Jacob because he had his hand on the heel of the firstborn child.
And the old man has purpose to bless his firstborn, but the prophecy said that the blessing would be on the younger of them. Have you ever been in a situation where you were not even in line for the blessing? Where it did not look like it was going to be you. You were not the favorite. You were not the most likely. You were not the preferred. You were not the one—not only in your family, in your neighborhood, in your school, in your house, in your life.
Have you ever believed God for something, and the odds were against you? The odds were against Jacob. The odds are against him, but they forgot that old Jacob is a fighter, and the fight started in the womb. And what we do not know is what happened in the womb. We do not know who was supposed to be first. We only know who came out first. That is all we know. We know who came out first.
The Fight Continues: Birthright for Stew
Now, when we look at this next deposit that we are going to make, this next phase, we are going to get down to the birthright in Genesis 25:29-34. We are going to begin to understand that the fight that started in the womb now continues outside the womb, because Jacob says it is not over. Somebody, say “it is not over.”
“Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. He said to Jacob, ‘Quick, let me have some of that red stew. I am famished.’ That is why he was also called Edom.” Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.” “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?” But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright. He gave away his birthright, but the Bible said that it was not his in the first place. Wonder why the Bible says, “Esau sought repentance with many tears and found it not”? See, sometimes somebody else has got something that is rightfully yours.
God Is Reversing the Order
Let me put it in biblical terms. I will give you houses that you did not build. I will give you vineyards that you did not grow. Somebody may be living in what is going to be your house. Somebody may be driving what is going to be your car. Somebody may be in an office that is going to be yours. They just do not know it yet. You may have to fight for it, but God said it is rightfully yours.
All I know is the way Jacob handled it is totally opposite to what the angel said to Rebecca. For the angel said to Rebecca that the older one would serve the younger one, and that reversed the order. Hear me right now. God is getting ready to reverse the order. You have got to be careful in this season who you walk past, because God is getting ready to reverse the order.
You have got to be careful who you look down on, because God is getting ready to reverse the order. Just because I do not seem like I have it does not mean that I am not about to get it. The last shall be first and the tail shall be the head. God is about to reverse the order.
And I admit, I have never really liked Jacob. I think Jacob was an embarrassment to the family. I always preached Jacob from a negative perspective, because it is his trick he pulled. Him and his mama got together and scammed the old man out of the birthright. She had him dressed like he was hairy. She had him change his voice and come into the room, and the old man could not half see, and he fooled around and blessed the wrong son—or was it the wrong son?
Is it not funny how God will move whatever He has to move and manipulate whatever He has to manipulate to put you in the place to line you up for what is next in your life? I want to talk to some folk that have a strange testimony. I want to talk to some people that were not born to be what you ended up being, but God just kind of started moving things around and switching things up, and you ended up someplace, and you say, “I do not even know how I got here.”
The Cloud Over the Blessing
Jacob finds himself in a place with his brother that even though he has the birthright, it does not feel right. He has the birthright, but it does not feel right, because Esau hated Jacob over what happened, which put a cloud over the birthright, and he also got the blessing. And the problem with the blessing is Jacob was dying when he gave him the blessing, and he gave him the blessing, and he told Esau, “I only had one.”
So, the Jacob that we see in our text has the birthright and the blessing, but he has not lost the struggle, because he has it under the cloud of, “Is it authentic? Is it rightfully yours?” Do not look confused, because some of you have some stuff right now that your haters say is not rightfully yours. Jacob is still trying to figure out, “Is this me, or is this God? Is this my manipulation, or is this divine intervention?”
Bear in mind, Jacob never heard what the angel told his mama. So, he climbs up on the mountaintop, and he makes up in his mind, “I am not coming down until I feel justified.” There is nothing more for him to get than the birthright and the blessing. The only thing left to get is to authenticate the blessing, and only God can do that.
Have you ever gotten into something that only God could get you out of? Jacob is wrestling, and wrestling—he has been wrestling in the womb, he has been wrestling with his brother, and now he has gone from wrestling to running. He is running from Esau, because Esau is trying to kill him, and his mother has to get him out of the house, because his brother is trying to kill him.
Wrestling with God at Daybreak
You thought you had problems in your family? We are about to see the sin of Cain and Abel repeating itself in Jacob and Esau. That is when your brother tries to kill you because of your blessing. You see, Satan does not have any new tricks. All he has is old tricks. And if you live long enough, you start to notice, “I have seen this before.” The names have changed, but this is that same old devil I had to fight ten years ago. Because the devil is not a creator. He is an imitator.
Jacob is wrestling with God, and God is visiting. He cannot stay, because He has not been born of a woman. And He says, “Let me go, for the day breaks.” And Jacob says, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” Wait a minute, you are already blessed. You already have the birthright.
Do you know you can be blessed and not know that the enemy can make you feel in such a way that you do not really know that you have what you have? Listen to the schizophrenia of their conversation. Jacob wrestles with the angel, but when the angel sees that the day breaks, the angel now says to him, “Let me go, for the day breaks,” and Jacob says, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
The angel says, “What is your name?” Who wrote this? We are in a fight. Me and Beanie in a fight, and we are rolling all over the pulpit, and I stop in the middle of the fight and say, “What is your name?” Would you not think I was pretty stupid to stop in a fight? And the angel asked him—who is actually Christ, and already knows—“What is your name?” And he answers, “I am what they call me. I am Jacob.”
See, the blessing was in figuring out who he was. The blessing was not the boat, it was not the car, it was not the house, it was not the cattle, it was not the sheep, it was not the property, it was not the land, it was not any of that. The blessing was, Do you know who you are?
From Jacob to Israel: A New Identity
So I want to ask you this morning, Do you know who you are? We have come to this mountain alone to wrestle with God, and the first thing He tells Jacob is, “You are not who you think you are. Your name shall no more be called Jacob.” Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans, and have overcome.”
Israel, you are a prince—not a fighter, not a wrestler, not a trickster, not a con-artist, not a liar. You did some of that, now, you did it, you did it, you did it, you did it, but you are not it. This is a higher calling. I press toward the mark of a higher calling. I press toward the mark of a higher call on my life than the gravitational pull of my history. I press toward the higher call of my destiny.
I am moving toward something that you may not even see in me. I am a prince without a palace. I am a prince without a throne. I am a prince without a princess. I am a prince—it does not look like it riding on this donkey, but I am a prince. You do not treat me like it, but I am wrestling with God to find out what is in me.
And He smote him at his hip joint, and Jacob never screamed, and he never yelled; he just comes hopping down off that mountain. He never cried out. He never hollered. You know why? It is worth the struggle. It is worth whatever the struggle was to find out who you are, and what you have got, and what you can do, and what you can be.
Limping with a New Purpose
And Jacob comes down off... Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel comes down—Jacob, Israel, Jacob and Israel, Jacob, Israel, Jacob, Israel comes down. He is limping off the mountaintop, only one leg, only one leg—the Jacob leg. Only one part of him is limping, is wounded. Jacob will never recover full strength, because what got smote was the Jacob side.
What got smote is the Jacob side. He hit the part of me that was controlling me, and knocked it out of joint, so it would not have the power that it used to have in my life. So, Jacob-Israel—all throughout the rest of his life, the names interchange back and forth, all the way to the grave, sometimes in the same sentence. One moment they call him Jacob. The next moment they call him Israel, because he still has that Jacob background, but he has that Israel future.
If you got that, you would tear this place up. Somebody in here is trying to act like you do not understand. You know you still have that Jacob background, but you have that Israel future, and you are just dragging that Jacob. You are just dragging that Jacob. Come on, Jacob, we are going this way, we are not going that way, we are going this way.
And he comes down off the mountain. Daybreak has come. The night fight is over. Every fight he ever had was a night fight. Fighting in the womb, fighting in the dark—he has had night fights. Anybody had night fights? Went to bed tired, woke up tired—night fights, night fights, night fights.
I want some real saints that can talk to me about some night fights. Three o’clock in the morning and you are having a night fight, 4:15 and you are just looking at the clock. You are up, you do not even know why you are up. What Jacob and Israel is having—a fight at four o’clock in the morning, and it has been a night fight, and it is morning time, because weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
What is important for you to see is this: Both of them came down off the mountain, but one of them had been smote. And Jacob never fully recovered his strength in Israel’s life. There are some things that are still there, but they are nowhere near like they used to be, because God has smote the hip joints, and you are walking with a limp because of what you have been through, and where you came from, and how you had to wrestle with God, and you had to wrestle with man, but you are still moving forward.
That is why you prevail, because you have been through hell, but you are still moving forward. You are crying all night, but you are still moving forward. You are lonely half the time, but you are still moving forward. And God gave you a limp to show the world that you are a fighter. You have been with God.
Confronting the Past with New Confidence
And the first person he runs into when he gets to the bottom of the mountain is Esau. That which he has been running from, he is now ready to confront. And he comes limping down off the mountain to say I am not scared of you anymore. I am not going to run from you anymore, because I found out who I am, and I know who I am, and I know what I can be, and I know what I can do, and I know where I can go, and I know what He has done in my life.
And I know that I have a destiny. And I know that what is in front of me is greater than what is behind me. And I know that nations shall come out of my body. That my twelve sons shall become the twelve tribes of Israel, and out of the twelve tribes of Israel shall come the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And I know who I am.
You cannot mess with me, because of what God put down inside of me. I now realize what a birthright really is. And by the way, you do not have any blessing to give me anyway. I have already been blessed. I have been blessed by God. I have been called by God. I have been directed by God. I have been sent by God. I have the anointing of God. I have the Word of God. I have the power of God.
The Lord told me to tell you to stop struggling with what He has given you. Just stop feeling unworthy of what He has given you. Just stop wrestling with what He is about to release in your life. The Lord told me to tell you to stop feeling ashamed because of the mistakes of your past, regarding what He is about to do in your life right now.
The Lord told me to tell you that the blessing is rightfully yours. It is rightfully yours. Somebody, holler “it is rightfully mine.” So I am going to be bold in it, I am going to stand up in it, I am going to walk in it, I am going to live in it, because today I realize that if God would have wanted Esau on the mountain, He would have put Esau on the mountain.
If God would have wanted to give Esau the blessing, He would have given Esau the blessing. If God would have wanted Esau to have it, He would have given it to him, and He would have never allowed the trick to work in his life. But God chose me. I may have showed up late, but He chose me.