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  (GENESIS) 49 - AFTER PENIEL, GOD'S FIGHTER RETREATING
  by S. Lewis Johnson
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Summary: The sermon teaches the danger of degeneration in the Christian
life and the importance of living up to our profession of faith.

Duration: 47:25 Topics: "Peniel"
Scripture References: Ephesians 1:1-2, Ephesians 5:1-2

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the preacher focuses on the story of Jacob and Esau in
Genesis chapter 33. He highlights the danger of degeneration in the
Christian life and emphasizes the importance of staying faithful to God.
The preacher also discusses the tests of life that Jacob faced,
including his meeting with the angel and his eventual reunion with Esau.
He encourages believers to remember the mercy and blessings of God, to
make the Word of God their food, and to have a regular prayer life. The
sermon concludes with an invitation for those who have not believed in
Jesus to recognize his sacrifice and seek forgiveness of sins.

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CONTENT
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This morning, will you turn with me to Genesis chapter 33. We continue
our series of studies in the book of Genesis and particularly now in the
life of Jacob. In the last of the installments in the story of the life
of Jacob, remember, he has been called back to the land from Haran and
on the way, he has wrestled with the angel, been defeated by the angel,
has begun to cling to the angel and received a blessing from the angel
who turns out to be another of the pre-incarnate appearances of our Lord
Jesus Christ.

And now in verse, or in chapter 33 in verse 1, Jacob is on the way, he
knows that Esau is before him and remember that the last time he saw
Esau was considerably, a considerable number of years previously, but
Esau had said that if he could get his hands on Jacob, he would wring
his neck or he would kill him in his own particular way. So Jacob is a
little bit anxious about this meeting with Esau. Then Jacob lifted his
eyes and looked and behold, Esau was coming and 400 men with him.

So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids and
he put the maids and their children in front and Leah and her children
next and Rachel and Joseph last. It's obvious where his affections lie.
They lie with Rachel and with Rachel's son Joseph.

But he himself passed on ahead of them and bowed down to the ground
seven times until he came near to his brother. Then Esau ran to meet him
and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept. And
he lifted his eyes and saw the women and the children and said, who are
these with you? So he said, that is Jacob, the children whom God has
graciously given your servant.

Then the maids came near with their children and they bowed down and
Leah likewise came near with her children and they bowed down and
afterward Joseph came near with Rachel and they bowed down. And he said,
what do you mean by all this company which I have met? And he said, that
is Jacob, to find favor in the sight of my Lord. But Esau said, I have
plenty, my brother.

Let what you have be your own. And Jacob said, no, please, if now I have
found favor in your sight, then take my present from my hand, for I see
your face as one sees the face of God and you have received me
favorably. I think what is meant by that is that Jacob is simply saying
that he sees a reflection of the favor that God has shown him in the
friendliness that Esau has manifested in seeing Jacob.

Verse 11, please take my gift which has been brought to you because God
has dealt graciously with me and because I have plenty. Thus he urged
him and he took it. Now Jacob was particularly interested that Esau
would accept this gift of over 500 animals which had been sent forward
because he was in the east.

If one took a gift, that was the assurance that the relationship had
been reestablished. And so he was anxious to see that that was
reestablished. Then Esau said, let us take our journey and go and I will
go before you.

But he said to him, my Lord knows that the children are frail and the
flocks and herds which are nursing are a care to me. And if they are
driven hard one day, all the flocks will die. Now that sounds as if it's
very wise on Jacob's part, but as we see, as we shall see, he is playing
the hypocrite.

Please let my Lord pass on before his servant and I will proceed at my
leisure according to the pace of the cattle that are before me and
according to the pace of the children until I come to my Lord at Seir.
Now Seir was down to the southeast and that was where apparently Esau
was living at this time. Disturbance in the nursery.

And Esau said, please let me leave with you some of the people who are
with me. But he said, what need is there? Let me find favor in the sight
of my Lord. So Esau returned that day on his way to Seir and Jacob
journeyed to Succoth and built for himself a house and made booths for
his livestock.

Therefore, the place is named Succoth. Now Jacob came safely to the city
of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan. When he came from Paternarum
and camped before the city, notice those expressions, which describe the
pattern of Jacob's existence at this time.

And he bought the piece of land where he had pitched his tent from the
hands of, hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, for one hundred
pieces of money. Then he erected there an altar and called it El, Eloi
Israel. May the Lord bless this reading of his word.

When Israel or Jacob wrestled with the angel at Panal and finally lost
the struggle, he asked of the angel, what is your name? Well, the angel
asked of him, what is your name? And he said, Jacob. And then he said,
your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven
with God and with men and have prevailed. Now that name, Israel, for
many years was thought by most Bible scholars to mean simply a prince
with God, because the word for prince is very closely related to the
name Israel.

Most of the Bible scholars today believe that that's not quite right.
That really the name Israel means something like God's fighter, or
perhaps, may God fight for him. Well, the subject this morning, as we
turn to Genesis chapter 33, is after Panal, or God's fighter,
retreating.

Panal is an epoch in the life of Jacob. He reaches a new level of
experience in the struggling with the angel, and particularly as he
realizes that the person with whom he's struggling is God himself. For
he says afterwards, I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been
preserved.

He fought with that unknown person who came to him, thinking perhaps
that he was a representative of Esau, since Esau was coming with 400
armed men. And they struggled in the beginning of the night, and
struggled through the night, and there seemed to be no way for each one
of them to make headway against the other one, until finally this
individual with whom he was wrestling, who evidently possessed an
awesome reserve of strength, as I mentioned in the last message two
weeks ago, touched Jacob's hip, and immediately it was dislocated and
out of joint. And Jacob realized at that time that the person with whom
he was wrestling was not after all a man, but a supernatural being.

Now Hosea tells us that he wept and sought his favor. So evidently when
Jacob realized what was happening, and that he was really not wrestling
with a man, but with a superhuman being, instead of wrestling with him,
he began to cling to him, and to weep, and to seek the favor of this
person with whom he had been struggling. That is a beautiful picture of
the posture of power in spiritual things.

Clinging, weeping, and seeking the favor of our great God. And so the
defeat which Jacob experienced really became a victory, because in the
defeat he was defeated, but in the victory of the divine being, Jacob
found his real victory, because he had learned to cling. And he's given
the new name of God's fighter, or may God strive for him.

That was a great high, it was a great high point in the life of Jacob to
this point. But it's one thing to attain to a great level of spiritual
experience, and it's another to keep it. They are not the same thing.

And so Jacob had reached a high level of spiritual experience, he's
actually wrestled with God, he's come to see him face to face, and
furthermore God has blessed him and given him a new name, God's fighter.
But it doesn't take anything but Esau to change Jacob from clinging to
cringing. And so he's cringing again in Genesis chapter 33.

Now that's indicated by the use of the name Israel through the rest of
this book. It illustrates for us the fact that Jacob is a person who is
up and down and up and down, even after this great experience. Now in
the case of Abraham, if you read the story of Abraham, he was called
Abram.

But when God changed his name to Abraham in the record itself, you will
find that it's Abraham, Abraham, Abraham, generally speaking thereafter.
I think maybe in the case of Abraham entirely thereafter. And when Saul
becomes Paul in the experience as set forth in the book of Acts, after
which you read Paul, and rarely if ever do you read the old name
appearing.

In the case of Simon Peter, the Simon which means weak, who has become
Peter the rock, almost altogether thereafter Peter becomes predominant
in the reference to the names of the two. But if you read the rest of
the book of Genesis, you will find that forty-five times after this
Jacob appears as Jacob. And only twenty-three times as Israel
thereafter.

And even in the use of the names you can see that Jacob while he has
this great experience and he's reached this high plateau, that night of
Panal, that afterwards he falls away from it quite often. And the cost
of this is seen in chapter thirty-four, the chapter we shall consider
next week, the Lord willing. Because the cost of falling away from the
Lord and the cost of drifting back toward the world and camping toward
the cities of the world is rape, treachery, massacre, and reproach upon
the name of God.

Unequal partnerships in life lead to disaster. And Jacob unfortunately
had to learn it by experience. So the chief lesson then of chapter
thirty-three as we shall see is the danger of degeneration in the
Christian life.

We're not suggesting of course that Jacob was not a believer. He was a
believer. And we're not suggesting that a person once having attained to
a spiritual experience may fall away and be lost.

We're not talking about the fact that he is no longer a believer. But it
is possible for believers to degenerate in their Christian experience.
And Jacob begins the path that leads to that in chapter thirty-three.

There is one other great lesson that one sees in chapter thirty-three
and that's the lesson that is found in the meeting of Jacob and Esau
again. It's kind of a classic of reconciliation. And as a matter of
fact, one of the rather unusual things about this experience, that when
these two brothers met after they had been separated for these many
years on Esau, we read, ran forward, embraced Jacob, fell on his neck
and kissed him.

The Lord Jesus, when he constructed the parable of the prodigal son,
speaking of the prodigal who went into the far country, finally came to
himself, decided he would go back to his father. And in Luke chapter
fifteen, I think it's about verse twenty, as the Lord tells the story of
the father, who is Jesus Christ's picture of God. As the father looks
down the road and sees the son coming after many years of separation
from the father, he picks up his garments, his long lengthy garments,
and in a very undignified way it might seem, but it's the dignity of a
merciful God who loves, he races down the road, meets his son returning,
falls upon his neck and begins to kiss him.

It's as almost as if our Lord has borrowed from this very chapter the
words by which to describe that meeting, the classic meeting of
reconciliation. It's a beautiful lesson, it's a beautiful illustration,
and we have it here in Genesis chapter thirty-three. Of course there are
other lessons here, but we want to concentrate on the principal one.

There are the lessons such as the power of kindness in our relationships
one with another. There is the lesson of the wisdom of taking God along
with us on our trips, and while Jacob falls backward, nevertheless in
the midst of the experiences of life, he does recognize that God is with
him. And of course it illustrates the duties of remembering the mercy of
God to us, and Jacob does, in spite of his failure, remember the
blessings of the Lord to him.

But preeminently it's the story of the danger of degeneration in the
Christian life, and that's what we want to concentrate on as we look at
Genesis chapter thirty-three. Now the first four verses of the chapter
record the meeting of the two brothers, Jacob and Esau, after many years
of separation, and the first step backward of Jacob. The tests of life
are illustrated here.

In chapter thirty-two Jacob meets with the angel, but now he must meet
with Esau. How often do we find this true in our Christian experience?
We have great blessing from the Lord. There are times in our lives when
we take a step or two forward, and things seem to be wonderful, and it's
just at that time often that our tests come.

And here he's wrestled with the angel in his head, the God himself,
bless him, but now he must meet Esau. Moses is on the mount and has that
wonderful experience of talking with the Lord God, receiving the law
from him, and then he must come down and face rebellious, the rebellious
nation that has gone after the golden calf. Our Lord on the mount of
transfiguration is transfigured and has the remarkable experience of
being in a sense glorified and given a foreview of the successful
completion of his work.

But coming down from the mount of transfiguration, just a few days after
that he must be on Mount Calvary and there suffering for the sins of
sinners. So it's almost a pattern of Christian things. Great blessing
and then a great trial.

As someone has said, he takes us up the hill difficulty into the house
beautiful where we sleep in the chamber of peace, which looks toward the
sun rising. Not that we should stay there, but that we should be rested
and accoutered and prepared to meet Apollyon in the valley and to pass
unscathed through the shadow of death and vanity fair. So we should not
be discouraged when we face trials, and we should not expect because we
have great blessings that everything is going to be wonderful
thereafter.

There is no such thing as a plane of life which we may reach and upon
which we shall never meet any difficulties or trials. Christian
experience is not like that because God is still working with us. We are
not built yet.

We are still under construction, and the saints of God should expect it.
In the book of Proverbs we read, the fear of man is a snare, but whoso
putteth his trust in the Lord is safe. Jacob forgot that text if he ever
knew anything about it.

Because now when Esau comes with his 400 men, the man who has wrestled
with God, the man whose name now is God's fighter, must take on the
attitude of obsequious servility with unusual attention devoted to Esau.
There was no reason for Jacob to have passed on ahead of them and bowed
himself to the ground seven times until he came near to Esau. It's true
that in the East they are very courteous, very nice, but there was no
reason for him to do that.

He comes to Esau not in the power of the Spirit, but in the power of the
flesh. Troubles may always be met in the way of the flesh or in the way
of the Spirit. They may be met in panic or they may be met in the peace
of God which garrisons our heart.

God had already told Jacob a long time before that he was going to be
with him, and furthermore that he would accomplish everything in his
life that he was going to accomplish. Everything. He had the absolute
assurance from the very Word of God that everything was going to be
wonderful so far as the future was concerned, so far as the ultimate
outcomes of things.

But instead of meeting Esau in the power of the promises of God, he
meets Esau in panic and fear and wonder over how Esau shall respond. Now
these are experiences of course that are unique for Jacob, but they are
the same experiences that you and I have. Some of us may have to meet a
doctor in that way.

Some of us may have a meeting with our employer that way. We may be very
disturbed. Some of us may have to meet a creditor.

The trials of life are of all the same kind, though they are not the
same trials. And as Christians we meet in the peace of God, not in
panic. Well, Jacob takes his first step backward from the high level of
that struggle with the Lord God at Panau.

Now in the conversation of the brothers that follows, there is the
second step backward. You might think that Jacob's words to Esau were
simply polite and shrewd, because when Esau invites him to come with
him, well he just says, after all you see I've got the flocks and the
herds and their nursing, and if we march them too rapidly they will die.
And furthermore I have my wives and I have the little children with me
and I've got to care for them.

And so Esau, you go on, and then in verse 14 he says, until I come to my
Lord at Seir. Now Seir was down in the southeast. And so Jacob's words,
if he did what he said he was going to do, would be simply polite,
shrewd, declining of Esau's invitation.

In fact it would be a testimony to the truth, if given in the right
spirit and the right motive. And he would have been defended by God,
even if he had gone down into Esau's territory. But there was no need
for God's fighter to lie, and that is exactly what he did.

He didn't intend to go to Seir. He said he was going in order to get rid
of Esau. But we read in verse 16 and 17, that Jacob journeyed to
Succoth.

Now if you look on the map, Seir is down to the southeast and Succoth is
up to the northwest. So as soon as Esau passed over the horizon, Jacob
decided, now's my chance to go the other way. And so he took off to the
northwest.

Now what do you imagine, what do you imagine Esau said about Jacob when
he found out that Jacob was not following? He said, now that's the
fellow, that's the fellow that said that all of that property that was
given to him, was given to him by God. He's the one who said that God in
his wonderful grace gave me all of this. And furthermore, he's the
fellow that said when he looked upon my face it reminded him of the face
of God, and how he had been kind and good to him.

I can just imagine him talking about Jacob saying, well you know Jacob
hasn't changed a bit. He's still a liar and a supplanter. And how often
things like that happen in the lives of believers.

You see how easy it is for the world to reproach and blaspheme the name
of the true God when we do not live up to the profession that we so
loudly make. It'd be much better not to be using the name of the Lord if
that's the kind of activity that is going to follow it. So here is the
danger of nullifying our verbal professions by our vile contrary conduct
of lying and cutting the corner so far as the truth is concerned.

Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse who has written some notes on the book of
Genesis has said that Jacob's name was changed from Jacob to Israel, but
it might well have been from the rest of the book through Jocke Ale or
Israel. And he combined the two words Jacob and Israel for Jocke Ale and
Israel. He combined them also in order to illustrate the fact that
throughout the rest of the book what we have is a combination of Jacob's
supplanter and Israel, God's fighter.

Now the third step backward is described in the last few verses and we'd
like to spend the remainder of our time on this. So Esau returned that
day on his way to Seir and Jacob journeyed to Succoth and he built for
himself a house and made booths for his livestock. Therefore the place
is called Succoth which means tabernacles or tents.

And then we also read in verse 18 that he came to the city of Shechem
and then noticed the last claws and camped before the city. And then in
the 19th verse it is said that he bought a piece of the land that he had
pitched there. And finally in verse 20 it's said that he erected an
altar.

Now I want you to notice the several steps here that emphasize that
Jacob has forgotten all about the vow that he had offered at a place
named Bethel. Back in chapter 8 and verse 21 we read these words when we
were expounding the section in which Jacob at Bethel had the vision of
the latter and the angels ascending and descending upon it. Jacob had
replied verse 20 he made a vow saying if God will be with me and will
keep me on this journey that I take and will give me food to eat and
garments to wear and I return to my father's house in safety then the
Lord will be my God.

Now Jacob's forgotten all about that vow. Furthermore he has forgotten
that when God called him back into the land he had said to him I am the
God of Bethel. Where Jacob should have gone was Bethel.

Instead he goes to Succoth and then he goes over near the city of
Shechem and he camps outside the city and takes up a relatively
permanent residence there because Donna the young girl who has the
terrible experience in the next chapter was just a little girl of about
seven years of age about this time so he must have stayed near the city
of Shechem for some time. So you can see that these steps emphasize that
he's forgotten all about his vow now and that Yahweh's forgotten that
Yahweh is the God of Bethel. That was the goal.

He has taken these significant steps. He has bought a house or he has
built a house. He's built some barns.

Now there is one characteristic of the patriarchs. They were to be
pilgrims. The New Testament says that Abraham was a man who went around
living in tents confessing that they were not citizens of this world.

But here is one of them who's confessing by his actions that he's very
much a citizen of this particular sphere. He's not living like a
pilgrim. He's living like a permanent resident and so he's built himself
a house and he has barns for his animals and furthermore he's camped
before the city.

Now the city was a heathen city. What do you think was the kind of
conversation that Rachel and Jacob had as these things were going on? I
think I can imagine Rachel saying something like this. You know Jacob,
Joseph is getting along in a few years now and he's up at the age where
he likes to be around other kids.

And furthermore after all Leah has children and Nebilha has children. So
we've got about a dozen children and they need some relationship with
other children. And this constant moving around with all these flocks
out in the country, that's not too good.

We ought to get near a city. We ought to give the kids an opportunity to
have fellowship with other kids. After all, that's the way you build up
proper personality, isn't it? And so you can just imagine the kinds of
conversations they had.

Social fellowship for the children. And so when Jacob comes outside the
city of Shechem and camps there, it's the attraction of compromise in
the Christian life. Now there are many things of course that indicate to
us that children ought to have fellowship with other children.

But to have fellowship with the world, that's an entirely different
matter. Because the world always wins when we have fellowship with the
world. We never win the world.

The world always defeats us. Now of course there may be some individuals
in the world who are won, but the world remains the world. It is an
enemy of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's an enemy of our Lord. He had to buy land. So he buys the very land
that God has promised him.

And then in order to impress others perhaps that he was a religious man,
he built that altar. Now I would imagine from the tenor of this
narrative here that that is an attempt to counteract his disobedience by
ceremony. And how often that happens.

When we are in the midst of disobeying the Lord God, we're very careful
that we do things that make others think that we really are quite
spiritual. And so we engage in spiritual exercises which are not really,
really what we wish deep down, but we do them in order to make an
impression on other people. So we attend church.

Or we attend the Bible study. Or we even go to our home Bible study. Or
we even come to the Lord's table.

But at the same time we are not obedient to the words that are set forth
in Holy Scripture. The Lord God is not nearly so interested in our
sacrifices as he is in the obedience of the heart. And I think that when
Jacob built this altar, it was not to truly worship this Lord God in the
sense that he may have from time to time, but he's counteracting his
disobedience by the ceremony.

And the reason that I think that this is bad is because of what follows.
Because it's in Shechem in the very next chapter that the rape and the
reproach and the massacre takes place. And so it's obvious this is a
place it seems to me that he should not have been.

The idea that our children must have society, that they cannot be
recluses, is correct to a certain point. But to be a whirling is
something else. For the world is an enemy of the Lord God.

James has said that the person who is friendly with the world is at
enmity with the Lord God. One cannot love the world and love the Lord at
the same time. What is whirliness in the final analysis? Well, I think
one of the major features of whirliness is the desire to appear, to be,
or to impress others.

And Jacob is living on the edge of the world and the person who lives on
the edge of the world is going to have difficulty. Someone has said he
needs a long spoon who sups with the devil. I wonder what Jacob was
thinking when he bought that land, too.

Was he thinking a bird and hen is worth two in the bush? The Lord's
promised me this after all, but I sure would like a little of it now. So
he does. But you cannot, I say, blend whirliness with godliness.

You cannot blend society with Christ. You cannot mix mammon and God,
because the world always wins out on those occasions. I'd like to, in
just the remaining moment, try to draw our attention again to the chief
lesson.

We've seen these three steps in Jacob's backsliding. When he meets Esau,
the conversation that follows and his deception and then finally in the
kind of life now that he begins to live. This illustrates, of course,
that conversion and consecration is no guarantee of an abiding
faithfulness in the spiritual life.

What we need is continuance. And you can see this illustrated, I think,
throughout Holy Scripture. Let's think for a moment of David.

David is a person who had a tremendous revelation from the Lord God. He
was told that from his seed there would come a ruler who would rule over
the whole of the face of the earth. That is that the Messiah would come
from the seed of David.

And those great Davidic promises are given to him in 2 Samuel chapter 7,
but it's not long after that that he is responsible for the great sin of
Bathsheba. Well, let's think about the apostle Peter. After Caesarea
Philippi, there on the mountain at Caesarea Philippi, the Lord had asked
the apostles, who do men say that I, the Son of Man am? They had given
some replies and then the Lord turned to them as a true preacher and
says, but whom say ye that I am? And Peter, in a flash of illumination
from the Lord God said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

In a few moments, the Lord Jesus takes Peter, James, and John upon the
Mount of Transfiguration and there the Lord is transfigured before him.
Later on he speaks about beholding the power and the glory of the coming
King. But it's just a few days after that that he denies, that he even
knows the Lord Jesus Christ.

Or think about those exhortations written in the apostle, by the writer
of the epistle to the Hebrews, about the awful possibility of believers
who have been in the life of Christ so long that they've passed from
freshness and spiritual things to the place where they have someone that
they have need for someone to teach them again the first principles,
spiritual senility. It's as if they began as a child, they reached
maturity, but now they are back where children are. It is awfully
possible for Christians to reach the stage of spiritual senility where
we need again to be taught the things that we were taught many years
before.

You see, spiritual experiences, though they are true and rich, do not
exempt us from the danger of degeneration. The grace of perseverance is
perhaps the greatest need of all of us. Haven't we all heard of some
servant of the Lord, or some well-known Christian whose testimony was
outstanding, but who nevertheless, at a point in his life, after being
honored and blessed by the Lord and by men, has fallen into sin and
shame.

We think of some who've commenced their Christian life and their
ministry full of hope, full of promise. People have said, oh, what a
great future. But now, because of failure to stick to the principles of
the Word of God, they are what someone has called unfulfilled
prophecies, by reason of disobedience to the heavenly vision.

They virtually cease to pray. They've ceased to be unworthy. They've
adopted unworthy methods in their ministry or in their witnessing.

They've pandered to worldliness and earthly ambitions, and the result is
a deadness and a darkness and a dryness and a dullness in spiritual
things. Souls not being saved through their testimony, believers not
being encouraged, everything stale and unprofitable, as Paul says, cast
away, discarded as useless. Not that they're not believers, but useless
in the Christian life, rejected because of loss of relationship to the
Lord God, the danger of degeneracy.

And we're not talking about men who are preachers. We're talking about
all of us in the family of the faithful. It's possible for all of us to
have a bright beginning, a glorious time in life when we are growing
spiritually, when there is a vitality in our Christian experience.

Maybe you've never stood by on a pulpit like this, but nevertheless
you've studied the Word of God and things have begun to come to be in
place, and you've been thrilled, and you've grown in the knowledge of
the Lord, and you've had a Christian testimony with your friends and the
people with whom you come in contact. But now, well, the reading of the
Bible, that's a good thing, but I don't really do much of it. To get
down on your knees and really agonize before the Lord in the sense that
you're earnestly petitioning him that you might grow in grace and for
the specific interests of the Lord in your life, well, that's long gone
if it ever was there.

You don't have any experiences like that. And consequently, the whole of
Christian life has settled down into the drudgery of having to attend a
meeting on Sunday morning, or maybe on a Wednesday night, or even a
Sunday night. You've lost the love that was there in the beginning.

Moody once said to one of the leading religious men of his day that the
one thing that he feared most was loss of testimony for Jesus Christ.
Last Sunday morning I preached in a little chapel in Toronto, both in
the morning and in the evening. And when I was there, I, at this little
chapel, Bridal Grove Chapel in Toronto, I went in at 9.30 for the Lord's
Supper.

They have the Lord's Supper every Sunday morning at 9.30, and a meeting
like we have here on Sunday night. I would imagine in that chapel there
were no more than 40 people there at the Lord's Supper, although at the
meeting later on there were 125 or perhaps 150. It's not a large
auditorium, but they had been given some property which is now worth a
million dollars, right in a beautiful location.

I don't imagine they have more than an acre or an acre and a half of
land, but it's very valuable land in Toronto. Well, they have a
testimony, and it's a nice testimony. Well, I came in and I sat down on
the second row up front, near the... where the elements were set before
us, and just about a minute before the meeting began, an elderly man
came in.

And I was sitting just about ten, well, probably only five feet from
him. He came in and he sat down right by the aisle, and he had a... he
had a... it looked like a small suitcase, about 18 inches long and about
14 or 15 inches wide, and it was about this thick, almost six inches.
Well, when he sat down, he put that down, and I wondered if that was his
pair of pajamas that he had slept in the night before.

But no, he reached down in a moment and he picked it up and he took
it... the top off of it, and by the way, it was so old, this thing that
he had it in. I think it was made in the reign of Queen Victoria. It was
graying with age or browning with age.

It was... the leather was rotting away. But anyway, he took out this
Bible, and the Bible was about as big as Webster's unabridged
dictionary. Great big thing.

And he opened it up, and I looked over on the pages, and his pages were
filled with notes, every page, and they were written in a beautiful
handwriting, all orderly, down the margins, at wide margins. Later on I
found out this was a Newberry Bible that was 60... he had had it for 60
years, and others had commented on the fact that he wrote in it with a
hand that was so beautiful, small, just like script, almost. So he sat
down, he opened that Bible up on his lap, and I looked, and I... now
that man is at least 80 years of age.

I thought it was great he could come in and have his Bible there, and
the meeting started, and we sang a hymn or so, and someone prayed. It
was an open meeting like we have here, in which the Holy Spirit is free
to move on the men to participate, and then suddenly I heard him
speaking out. He was still sitting down, and he read Ephesians chapter
5, verses 1 and 2. He just said, will you turn to Ephesians chapter 5,
verse 1 and verse 2, and everybody did.

And so he read those verses which have to do with the sacrifice of
Christ. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, walk in love
just as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering
and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. And then he began, he...
after he had done this, he folded up his Bible, put it on the side, and
stood up.

He put one hand on the front pew in order to steady himself, and then he
turned around to the audience and began to expound. Had an amazing
number of facts in his mind. He said now in the epistle to the Romans,
the word righteousness or the roots occur 58 times.

And he mentioned some other thing that occurred 6 times. I remember he
asked, what is the glory of God? He said that's the perfect harmony of
the 42 attributes of God. I said 42? I never have known of any
theologian who got more than about 30 attributes of God, but he's got
42.

But then I said he's old. It's possible he's had a longer time looking
than the rest of the theologians. But he began to expound, and it was a
beautiful exposition of the Old Testament.

He turned to the offerings, and he spoke about the burnt offering, and
the peace offering, and the meal offering. And he was exalting the Lord,
and then he began to preach, and he got fervent. And I remember that he
finally said you know if these things really gripped us, and his hand
was going, he was, by the way he was 92 and a half years of age.

92 and a half. I saw a picture afterwards of him when he was 75, and it
was published 16 years before that. He was 92 and a half years of age,
and he stood up, and he began to get fervent.

And I remember this last statement, he said now if we, these things
really gripped us, said our meeting would be, and this is the way his
hand was going, our meeting would be lively, and vital, and not like a
funeral service. And I noticed everybody in the audience was looking at
him and smiling. They were listening.

They knew him. I didn't know him, but he had been there for about six
weeks from New Zealand. Well it turned out he was Mr. Charles J. Rolls,
who was educated at Cambridge.

He was a missionary in India. He was a home director of a faith mission
many years. His forebears had real prominence in England.

He was named after Lord Clangotok's third son, the Honorable Charles
Rolls, who in 1906 with Frederick Royce formed the Rolls-Royce Company.
And his name was Charles J. Rolls. This Newberry Bible he'd had for
sixty years, bulging with all of his study notes and outlines in this
meticulous engraving-like script of his.

And incidentally after the morning meeting, Shirley Mims, Dr. Mims'
wife, came to me and said, I believe that that's the same Mr. Rolls who
was here about twenty years ago who spent a week in our home. And she
said, furthermore, he likes to bake bread. And I said, that's right, and
he still bakes bread.

He bakes bread for his family right at this moment. And even in Toronto
when he was visiting, he went in the kitchen and baked bread. He wants
to be doing something all the time.

He has written several books on the attributes of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and I couldn't help but think, if God should enable me to live to be
ninety-two years of age, I would want to be a man as fervent in spirit
as Mr. Rolls was. What a tremendous testimony to remain fervent in
spirit and not have the experience of the danger of degeneration. Now
the rewards of clinging instead of cringing before men and the world are
very evident.

The fear of man brings a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord
is safe. While the light that God gave to Jacob at Panal would have
given him protection from all the disasters that faced him afterwards,
would have protected him and kept him and encouraged him, there is no
reason why we should not have the assurance of the presence and power of
the Lord with us no matter what we face. May the Lord deliver us from
degeneration.

What a terrible thing it is to grow cold in spiritual things, to avoid
the reading of the Word of God, to avoid the time by your bedside and
the pouring out of your heart before the Lord, to avoid the fellowship
with him. Life does become dull and drab and dead, and it's no wonder
that some of the things have to happen to us by way of discipline. May
the Lord God speak to our hearts.

Delivering us from the danger of degeneracy. If you're here this morning
and you have never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, your
responsibility of course is to recognize that he's offered the all-
atoning sacrifice and to flee to the shedding of the precious blood for
the forgiveness of sins. May God help you to come.

And then when you come and you have the vitality of the forgiveness of
sins, don't lose the joy. Make the Word of God your food. Have a time of
prayer regularly with the Lord God.

Get down on your knees. Pour your heart out before him. Learn what it is
to truly pray.

You might even shed a few tears by your bedside. It won't hurt. And when
you face the trials of life, you'll face them with the Lord.

Let's stand for the benediction. We are grateful Lord for the lessons
that are found in Holy Scripture. Deliver us from spiritual senility.

Deliver us from the peril of degeneracy in our Christian life. What a
reproach to the Lord God to lie and cheat like the world. O God, by thy
wonderful grace uphold us.

Make us different. We know that in ourselves we are like Jacob, crooked.
Glorify thy name in thy blessing to us.

Magnify thy grace in our lives. And Father, if there should be some here
who have never believed in Jesus Christ, bring them to him, whom to know
is life eternal. For his name's sake.

Amen.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/13/SID13092.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/s-lewis-johnson/genesis-49-after-peniel-gods-fighter-retreating/
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