Sermon Transcript
Each week this summer, if you haven’t been here, we’re hearing from one of our elders or church staff how God has worked in their lives, because we wanna show that God still involves himself with us in very similar ways to how he involved himself in the lives of the people we find in scripture. So today we will hear from Danny Oh, who is one of our elders. And as Danny and I were working through how his story related to what we find in Scripture, Danny identified that in many ways he resonates with Jacob from the Old Testament. Their stories are not identical, of course. There are many differences between Danny and Jacob, but there’s a good bit of overlap too, particularly from where Jacob started to where he ended, and from where Danny started to where he is now.
If you’re not familiar with the Old Testament figure Jacob, I’ll give you a bit of an overview, and then Danny will come up here and fill in how his story connects in many ways. So Jacob was born into a believing family. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham. Abraham, the Abraham who God promised, you know, I will bless all nations through you. Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
It’s the Abraham whom God said, set out to the land that I will show you. So that means Jacob would have grown up hearing all these stories, hearing of God’s miraculous provision over and over again. He heard of the unlikely birth of his father Isaac in Abraham’s old age. Age. Jacob would have been saturated in stories of God’s goodness and God’s promises.
But even with that, Jacob certainly does not appear settled in God’s plan for his own life. In fact, from an early age, Jacob bargained. He even schemed. He actually tricked both his father Isaac and his brother Esau so that he could get a special blessing from dad. Apparently, Jacob thought whatever he was slated to get as an inheritance was not going to be enough, so he takes matters into his own hands.
He manipulates the situation for his own benefit to the detriment of his brother, which obviously angered his brother Esau. And as a result, Jacob leaves home. At least partially, he leaves home to put some distance between himself and angry Esau. Jacob goes to live in a different region with his uncle, and there with his uncle he again bargains and schemes. He manipulates the agreement between himself and his uncle in a way that is advantageous to him, which again shows he is not settled.
He for some reason still needs control of situations. In order to maybe feel secure. He does it with everyone, it seems like, and he even does it with God. He even attempts to bargain with God. Apparently, he doesn’t feel secure in God’s promises in and of themselves.
He wants to do something that will ensure that he gets these promises. So for instance, Genesis 28, as Jacob was setting out from his angry brother, on his way to his uncle, Jacob has a vision where God promises to Jacob very specific things. God actually basically repeated what he told Abraham. God told Jacob, all people will be blessed through you. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth.
And then God says to Jacob, Genesis 28, I am here with you and I will watch over you where you go. And I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised to you. Which sounds pretty nice, right? I mean, we might assume Jacob must now feel at ease in his soul.
God said, I’ll always be with you. I mean, if we were fleeing from our angry brother headed toward an unfamiliar place and we’re pretty stressed and God appeared to us and said, I’m gonna be with you Everything is going to be okay. We would probably feel reassured, but Jacob was not reassured. Instead, he says— he tells God, he makes a vow. He says, if God will be with me and watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s household, which is exactly what God had just promised him.
He’s like, God, if you do that, then the Lord will be my God. And on top of that, I’ll— of all that you give me, I’ll give you back a tenth. Jacob is saying something like, God, if you come through for me, then I will give you the magnificent honor of being my God, right? I’ll join your team if you come through for me. I’ll even give you a kickback God, right?
He’s trying to control the deal. He’s not submitting to God. In fact, he kind of wants God to submit to him. He wants God on his payroll. He’s using God for an outcome that he wants, or he’s trying to, which— hey, perhaps that’s how many of us begin in faith, bargaining with God.
If you do this, then I’ll do this. Maybe that’s how a lot of us begin, but it’s not surrender. Jacob hasn’t surrendered yet, but his story isn’t over. After meeting God on his journey, he continues on to his uncle’s house. He spends years there.
Eventually, he decides to make the journey back to his father’s house, and as he does, Jacob receives word that Esau is coming to meet him along the road. And Jacob is worried. He assumes, of course, that his brother is still mad at him. He thinks Esau may be coming to fight him or kill him for all the lying and deception from years before. And Jacob again responds by trying to scheme, trying to control the situation.
He sends gifts ahead of his traveling party to pacify his brother. He’s trying to buy his brother off like he tried to buy God off before. And then, after he sends gifts ahead, it’s nighttime and he tries to sleep, rather terrified. But during the night, God again comes to meet with him. It is one of the most unusual accounts in the Bible.
God wrestles with Jacob, Genesis 32, which we can’t possibly even begin to unpack all of that this morning, but we have taught on it before. So you can go back in our archives online if you want more of an exposition of God wrestling Jacob, right? But for today, we’ll just say God fights Jacob. And in the course of that struggle, God touches Jacob’s hip. The word used for that touch is like the slightest type of contact possible.
But that’s all it takes for Jacob’s hip to be permanently disabled. Jacob isn’t killed, but he’s wounded. And for the first time in his story, it appears he’s beginning to understand submission and surrender. To God. He’s shocked he’s alive.
He has a posture of gratefulness. He says, Genesis 32, I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared. So he’s not bargaining anymore. He’s simply amazed that God would meet with him. And suddenly, seeing God, he realizes that is all that I need.
He is enough by himself for just meeting with me. And this is the point when God gives Jacob a new name. He says, you will no longer be Jacob, but you will now be Israel. And as often the case with other biblical figures, Jacob named— his name change coincides with a change in his person, because he really is different after his struggle with God. He seems much more settled He’s even calm as he goes out to meet with his brother.
He’s not trying to force anything anymore. He’s not trying to control anything anymore. He is surrendered to God. He moved from a bargaining type of faith to a surrendered faith through struggle.
With Jacob, it’s as if the struggle is necessary. I mean, would Jacob have ever surrendered without A dislocated hip? Don’t know. But what we can say, we’ve probably noticed in our own lives, is that faith often develops the most through struggle. And what we find on the other end of the struggle is far better than anything that we thought we needed before.
We find surrender to God is sweeter than everything else, and maybe we even learn through the struggle We can never scheme our way. We can never scheme our way into a better future than the one God already has planned for us. We can never buy a better outcome from him than what he’s planning to do already. There is no plan, there’s no payment we can make. We have nothing to offer that would increase his favor upon us any more than it already is, because he already made the ultimate payment on our behalf.
Christ already gave himself for us so that we would have every blessing from God, which means we can rest. We don’t have to scheme. It is finished. Eventually Jacob got there. Moved from bargaining to surrender.
And as I said, Danny’s story parallels Jacob’s in many ways. Not in every way, in many ways. So let’s welcome Danny up here to— yeah, that’s great— to show us how God is still in the business of bringing people from bargaining to surrender. Let me pray for you. Father, thank you for Danny and the way that you have wired him and the story that you are writing in his life, um, and the lives of all of his loved ones.
Lord, we pray that his story blesses our own, that our hearts and minds are open to what you have written in his life, and as especially as it relates to scripture. We pray all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you so much, Dan. And thank you, Dan, for this opportunity to speak to you all. As I prepared for this, I have to say that I first have a much better appreciation of what Dan and Steve do, for all the work they do every week in preparing Bible-centered, clear, and engaging sermons. It’s a lot of work. So thank you from me, and can we give them a round of applause?
I also have to say that it’s been great to hear how God has worked in different people’s lives through Dan, through Alba, Al, I could totally see you being a radio announcer now, and Mark, based on their own life experiences. And today you’ll hear about my own unique journey, as Dan was saying, from bargaining to surrender. So for starters, I’m not a native Californian. Interestingly, my path to Bay Area formed a cross, albeit a bit crooked, on the map of the United States, as I come from— so follow me here— Toronto, Detroit, Dallas, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Seattle, Milwaukee, and then finally the Bay Area. So it formed a cross.
So in my childhood, so I grew up in suburban Detroit, and I attended church, so I knew about the Lord. And was exposed to the Bible and biblical teachings, but honestly, for me, going to church was more of a something that we do on a Sunday kind of activity rather than because I truly understood at the time the power and the love of the Lord. I think that this was in part because of my tendency to think in concrete terms. You know the old adage, you have to see it to believe it. From that perspective, how could somebody I can’t see with my own eyes possibly have a positive impact on my life?
As a result, I really felt like I could do things all on my own. On top of that, I grew up in an environment where academic achievement was the norm. It was never forced, but it was implicitly expected. You put this together with my concrete thinking together, and I thought of academic achievement really as a security blanket. You know, if you do well academically, then this will lead to positive outcomes in life, like getting the right job, being respected, having nice stuff, and so on.
So then I thought, I’m pretty good at science, and I’m pretty good academically, so becoming a physician makes sense because it would provide the worldly security that I’ve been seeking and that was so important to me. And again, I was determined to accomplish this on my own. Clearly at the time I didn’t understand 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 18. So we fix our eyes on not what is seen but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal. So before I move on, let me outline at the time how I envisioned becoming a physician.
So step 1, get good grades, good test scores, good recommendations, and participate in right activities. To get into the good— to get into a good medical school. Step 2, rinse and repeat, get to a good residency. Step 3, rinse and repeat and get to good fellowships. And then finally, step 4, voilà.
Suresh, if you can put that on the screen. Now I will have the worldly security I long for. Okay, so this is not exactly what I had in mind, but you get the idea. Sorry, this is a gastroenterologist humor. So I bet you didn’t wake up this morning saying and thinking, I’m going to church to see a guy wearing a poop emoji hat.
Did you? But I had to put it in. So, Suresh, I think you can put it down because, yeah, it’s hard to take me seriously if you have that picture back up. So anyway, and remember, I was determined to do it on my own because my hard work was something that I can control. And would lead to success.
I didn’t need God for any of this, right? Wrong. Let’s just say God had other plans. So the winds of challenge really started to hit me in college, and this is where God began to enter my life in what I call my bargaining phase. Yep, this was an improvement from where I was before college in terms of my reliance on God, but clearly far from optimal.
So for college, I attended a local state school whose name I shall not mention so as not to risk the ire of Pastor Dan over there, or to be smitten or smote by lightning. But I will say that in my 4 years there, Ohio State only won once over the Wolverines in football. Sorry, I had to put that in there. Yeah, so hopefully I won’t get a talking to after service. Okay, there were a lot of smart people in my chemical engineering class, which made it that much harder for me to achieve my goal of getting the good grades I I needed for my master plan.
So this is where I began to bargain with God. If I get an A on this test, I get an A in this class, then I’ll pray more, God. I’ll go to church. And the same thing applied when I was studying for the MCAT, the Medical College Admissions Test, which you need to get as part of medical school. God, if you let me do well on this test, then I’ll read the Bible more.
Etc. I didn’t always get my way, which was quite stressful for me, I have to admit. But nonetheless, he was gracious enough to get me through college in reasonable shape academically. And when it was all said and done, I gave myself the proverbial pat on the back because I worked hard to achieve what I wanted to. Did I keep up with all the bargains that I made with God during that time?
Nope. Of course God knew this would be the outcome, but he was patient and he had other ways to get to me. God was also gracious enough to provide me several options for medical school, but it was clear that my best option from the acceptances I had received was to head down to Dallas. UT Southwestern ticked all of my checkboxes. It’s a highly rated school with lots of opportunities, good track record, record of sending their trainees to good training programs, and You get great training there, and the tuition was significantly less than other schools that I was looking at to boot.
Yet I didn’t want to go initially. So why was that? Yeah, you may be thinking part of the reason was that Texas is like a foreign country to me, having grown up in the Midwest. Nothing against Texas, by the way. But the main reason was that I was waitlisted at several other schools that were more brand-name.
My thinking was, If I can get into an even more prestigious school, then I’ll have an even higher chance of success, of being successful and secure from that worldly sense. I clearly remember bargaining with God about this. God, just get me into one of those schools and I’ll be a better Christian. I’m sure God has heard that one before. Well, let’s say in the end, I ended up reluctantly driving down to Dallas with my dad.
And if I thought college was hard, medical school was even tougher. Imagine trying to distinguish yourself in an environment that is chock-full of really smart, talented, and capable people. As a result, I did even more bargaining with God than in college. My faith was really at a lull during medical school since it was quite demoralizing to bargain so much and just as regularly not get what I asked for. But there were fortunately bright spots during my 4 years of medical school.
So shortly after I arrived in Dallas, I met a lot of new people. I was very fortunate to meet one person in particular in my lab carrel, Lab Carrel A. I remember it very clearly.
Dorothy was a fellow Midwesterner and a Big Ten graduate— go Badgers— and had so many positive qualities. I promised her I wouldn’t go and spend the rest of the sermon outlining those positive qualities to embarrass her, so I’ll leave it at that. But one very important one I did not appreciate at the time was that her relationship with the Lord was on much more solid ground than mine.
I am so grateful that when my faith was on the rocks during this time and other stressful periods of my life, Dorothy has been there by my side to walk with me. She has been such a positive influence, not only back then, but also over the ensuing 28 years in showing me what the power of having the Lord truly be in your life looks like. God was once again gracious enough through medicals, get me through medical school in reasonable shape academically. And he provided me the opportunity I was seeking for, for so long by being accepted into my top choice residency program. And Dorothy and I were accepted by the both— by the same program together.
We couples matched and we got our first choices. But yet once again, I gave myself the proverbial pat on the back since it was me. I was the one who worked hard to get what I wanted to achieve. I wish now that I’d known that God was the one who was in control and deserved the glory. But I’m grateful that you remain patient with me.
These cycles of bargaining and suffering continued through internal medicine and gastroenterology training, and I continued to believe that it was all my hard work. I was doing everything to make my goals possible. For those of you keeping track then, now it’s been 15 years from the start of college to the end of my medical training. I was still bargaining with God for positive things to happen to me. That I thought were best for me.
I think you agree, folks, that’s a long time for bargaining to suffer, but it continues. I’m a stubborn one. What can I say? So in terms of other important life events that happened during this long period of training and bargaining, Dorothy and I got married during our 3rd-year residency, and Isaac arrived during my 2nd year of fellowship, and Aaron came along 4 years later, on the left, during our 2-year stint in Seattle after we both finished training. While a lot has happened in the last 15 years that has helped shape my faith, I want to share how God bringing me here to the Bay Area from Wisconsin has been a significant catalyst for my ultimately and finally moving from the bargaining to surrender with the Lord.
So let me give you a little bit of background here in terms of our life before we came here. So back in Wisconsin, both Dorothy and I were in academia. Doing research, teaching, and practicing. My plan was to make it big, get promoted with tenure, lecture around the country and all the world, be a widely recognized thought leader in my area of expertise, extensively collaborate with a broad range of colleagues, get robust funding for my research, lots of papers published in high-impact journals, and on and on and on. I was still bargaining during this time, and again, God was gracious enough to sometimes let me have my way.
However, it became increasingly clear that my life was not sustainable on this path that I was on. First, I began spending more and more of each day, each week, each month for the chance to succeed at my vision since it required additional significant work that generally happened on nights and weekends on top of my clinical and teaching research my responsibilities. Even when I was home, I remember I was often distracted with work. But this came at a cost. I was— not only was I drained mentally, emotionally, and physically, I had less time for the family and the Lord.
Couple that, Dorothy was also very busy trying to establish herself professionally, and I wanted to do everything I could to continue to be supportive of her career. On top of all that, after multiple health challenges as a toddler, Aaron, our little one, was diagnosed with autism at age 4. Our family was at a crossroads. Geographically, it made the most sense to stay in Wisconsin. Why?
Because we had begun making some inroads for Aaron in terms of getting the resources he needed for his autism. Dorothy’s parents, my in-laws, were close by in Madison, so they can come and and visit and be part of our lives like they’ve been. And Isaac was actually happy at school, but the biggest weight on my mind was that Aaron craves stability, routine, and normalcy as part of his autism, and moving him would clearly go against all those things. Professionally, we considered multiple options. The one that seemed to make the most sense, accounting for these geographic considerations, was me to move to private practice and to stay put in Wisconsin and have Dorothy quit her job to focus on the family.
However, this was still far from ideal for several reasons, again, one of which, remember, I wanted to support Dorothy in her ongoing desire to have a career. Then one option became a possibility— that became a possibility was to move to the Bay Area and for both of us to leave academia and join the pharmaceutical industry. So rewind back a little bit. Actually, Dorothy was offered a job in the Bay Area before, but she had to decline it because I didn’t have any job offers at the time. Amazingly, about 9 months later, Dorothy was unexpectedly offered a different role in the same group that became available.
And then around the same time, I was also offered a role in the same company in a different group, and we only found out about that because one of my medical school— one of our medical school classmates told us about it. We knew it’d be a significant leap of faith if we took both jobs. Professionally, we would be in some ways having to start all over again, because believe it or not, a fair bit of what needs to get done to develop a drug, they didn’t teach us in all those years of training. Also, we’d have to accept the roles kind of blindly, because think about it, the company could not tell us everything, all the key proprietary stuff before we signed and joined, but we kind of need those pieces of information to make an informed decision. So we had to take a leap of faith in that regard.
And let’s not forget about the geographic considerations I moved— I mentioned before. Moving Aaron 2,000-plus miles away, I think, counts as a significant change that could have negatively impacted him. And I still struggled with my giving up on my vision of being professor Oh. But after much prayer, for the first time, I decided to surrender to him. So I mentioned before how I had less time for the Lord while trying to juggle all these things in Wisconsin.
We did attend church regularly in Wisconsin, but my faith didn’t grow. I felt anonymous, and the church that we attended being very large didn’t help. On top of that, remember, I was so exhausted and therefore, it was really challenging for me to actively seek out other believers for support. In addition, I had difficulty really being able to immerse myself in church and Sunday service because we were often unable to drop off Aaron in Sunday school because of his behavioral challenges, autism, and the church we attended didn’t have any kind of provisions for special needs children.
I have to say, among the multiple unexpectedly positive things that have happened since we’ve moved here that my old bargaining self could have never imagined. Being part of Bridges has had a profound impact on me, and I have to thank Erin for bringing us here because when we were looking for a church after moving here, we were looking for a place with a special needs ministry, and Bridges fit the bill. The environment here in key ways was opposite of what I was experiencing in Wisconsin. I didn’t feel anonymous. I felt connected, particularly after joining Common Need.
And there are many people I have to thank for nurturing both of our boys, but particularly Aaron. What has been just as amazing, or even more so, is that through the love and efforts of multiple people here— and this is just a brief list— Shannon, DK, Alba, Casey, Brad and Christy Cole, just to name a few. Aaron is learning about a meaning to understand who the Lord is, which if you think about it is no small feat for an autistic child who has a tendency for concrete and literal thinking. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that. And through experiencing all of this, my faith has blossomed more here than at any other point in my life and allowed me to finally see the true power of surrendering to God.
Yes, there are still challenges and uncertainties in my life right now, but having surrendered to the Lord, I know that his way is the best way, which has given me comfort, peace, and joy that I did not have before. So as I reflect upon my faith journey from bargaining to surrender, I wanted to make 2 last points. So the first one was— is So if you think about it, my bargaining in large part was based on the incorrect premise that God is like some sort of genie that grants wishes. Remember what 1 John 5:14-15 says, this is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will, not mine, he hears us. And secondly, as I reflect, my story, like Jacob’s, is not only one of surrendering through struggle, There was a lot of struggle and a lot of stress, but also showing me that God’s way and not my way benefited, benefited me more than I could have imagined.
Let’s pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for how gracious and patient you are with us, even though we can be so stubborn, selfish, and unreasonable. Lord, it is so tempting to believe that that we know what is best for us and we should be in control. But I pray that we can completely surrender to you and experience the joy and peace knowing that whatever you have planned for us is best and will further your kingdom and your will. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
