HOW DO YOU WANT TO BE REMEMBERED?

Genesis 32:24-32
I read recently about a man who had passed away and what they wanted the funeral parlor to do with the body. This man was a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and this is how the family wanted him remembered. So they told the funeral director that instead of placing his body in a coffin, they wanted the man placed on a recliner, with a television playing Pittsburgh Steelers highlights. Next to him there was to be a table with an open can of beer and a package of cigarettes. This is how his family remembered him, and this is how the family wanted the rest of his friends and loved ones to remember him. This was the lasting impression that was imprinted on the minds of people who knew him.
The question I have for you today is a simple one: How do you want people to remember you? One day all of us are going to die, and how would you want people to remember you? Some of us might die soon, and some of us might not die for a while, and we have all heard that statement about lasting impressions. You see, you don't have to be dead for people to have a lasting impression imprinted on their minds about you. In our text, that is what concerns Jacob so much about tomorrow.
It had been 20 years since he last saw his brother, and the last things his brother remembered about him was that Jacob took his birthright and his blessing, and those are not things so easily forgotten, are they?
We have heard the phrase, "Time heals all wounds," but in Jacob's case he wasn't so sure. He knew what he had done to his brother; he knew what it was like to be cheated because he spent 20 years working for a man who was just as deceitful as Jacob had been, maybe even worse. Let's give Jacob the benefit of the doubt: He wasn't all to blame because circumstances played their way into this story. Maybe you can recall some of the moments that have triggered this moment in Jacob's life.
You might remember life didn't start out on the best of notes for Jacob. First there was the time he spent with his brother in his mother's womb. I don't know if many mothers who have had twins have had the same experience Rebecca had with Jacob and Esau, because when they were in her womb they jostled about quite a bit. As a matter of fact, maybe a better way of saying they are jostling each other is to say they were trying to crush one another. So from the very beginning, life was a struggle between Jacob and Esau.
To make matters worse, when they were born, because of their birth order, Isaac came up with this wonderful idea of how to keep sibling rivalry to a minimum by picking Esau as his favorite son, but Rebecca wasn't above such vices; she favored Jacob.
Then there was the incident with the stew and birthright, so Jacob wasn't entirely to blame. The writer of Hebrews said about Esau and his handling of the situation: "lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright." Esau wasn't completely innocent and was just as much to blame for what transpired between the stew and the birthright. SOURCE:SERMON