Experiencing God No.4 The Example of Jacob

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet, and appointed him to be the head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. Now may God be pleased to add his blessing to that reading from his word.

I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles open at Genesis and chapter 22. I gave you the wrong reference there, I was panicking for a moment, what was Abraham doing in Genesis 22, it's 32, and you don't get Abraham, you get Jacob. From the 22nd verse, that night Jacob got up, this is Genesis 32 and verse 22, that night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his 11 sons, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions, so Jacob was left left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip, so that his hip was wrenched, as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, let me go, for it is daybreak.

But Jacob replied, I will not let you go, unless you bless me. The man asked him, what is your name? Jacob he answered. Then the man said, your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and have overcome.

Jacob said, please tell me your name. But he replied, why do you ask my name? Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, it is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.

The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon. Dr. Lloyd-Jones preaching in London in the 1960s, one Sunday morning challenged his congregation with a statement that I'd like to have read in full, but it would take too long.

But it concluded by saying this, the most vital question to ask any Christian is, have they a soul first for God? The vital question to ask any Christian is, have they a soul first for God? You remember from the reading Andrew brought from Ephesians 1, the Apostle Paul has to say to his beloved congregation there in Ephesus, I keep on asking God that you might know him better. And that has been really the launching pad, so to speak, of this series of addresses that I've been trying to bring to you Sunday morning by Sunday morning on the experience of God. Now I'm fully aware that we've looked into Jacob at Peniel just two Sundays ago, but it seems to me that there was quite a lot of distraction in the congregation one way and another, and certain things that I wanted to apply by way of personal suggestions were left unsaid.

And what's more, there were some 70 of our people on holiday, so it's right, I think, that we come back to this particular incident bearing in mind Paul's concern for the Ephesians that they might know God. And here is an illustration of a man by the name of Jacob, perhaps the most unlikely candidate in the early chapters of the book of Genesis, who came to a real dynamic encounter with the Lord God at a place called Peniel. Peniel means the face of God.

There's a Pentecostal assembly in London called Peniel Chapel. I've always thought that that's a most delightful name for any church. The chapel where the face of God is seen.

And it's my prayer this morning, as on every Sunday morning and evening, that somehow or other we might have already, or in the moments that are yet to come, have an experience of God, and catch a glimpse of His face. You see, I've long gone, and I've confessed this before, long gone beyond the point when I thought that theology was the be-all and the end-all of life. Theology and the mere study of God's Word can be a very barren pursuit.

It is not the Word of God that is important for us to know. It is the God of the Word. It's not theology, a mere academic bundle of propositions.

It's theophany, knowing this great God who caused this Word to be written. Now our knowledge of God comes through the book, but we don't just stop with the book. We want to go on and to know its author, and to know him more and more in all his triune manifestation, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Well, assuming your knowledge of the context of this story, at least in part, I want to make certain practical suggestions, which I have tried to work myself from Scripture and from my own experience, in suggesting ways in which perhaps we can prepare for a renewed encounter, or maybe for some, for the first encounter with God in our own lives. How can I know him? How can I experience him more and more? Do you have that desire? If at least you have it, though it's never been satisfied. Thank God for the desire.

If you long for God, like David says, the heart, the fleet-footed deer longed for the water of the brooks. Well, that's a good point at which to commence. But bear in mind from this chapter, and other incidents that I could bring as, as secondary courts of appeal, that God is willing to be known.

God is willing to be known. The Lord says, draw near to me, and I will draw near to you. In one very real sense, Jacob, during the fourteen years he'd spent away from his home country, never sought for God.

But God was still stalking Jacob. And I praised God in my own life for days, months, when I have not sought him. And yet he has sought me.

This is the incredible thing. I don't understand it, but I believe that it's recorded in both Old Testament and New Testament, that God is willing to be known. J. W. Tozer, one of my favorite writers, who makes this comment, God waits to be wanted.

For many, he waits so long, so very, very long. God waits to be wanted. I think that when we get to heaven, one of the questions that God might put to us is this, why did you make it so very difficult for me to know you, and for you to know me? I wasn't reluctant.

You had all the opportunities of getting to know me at a much more intimate level than you ever did. Why did you make it so difficult? I say to encourage you, God is willing to be known. This experience to which I refer, or these experiences, they're not for some specific group within Christendom, not for the professionals as opposed to the laity.

That we might know God, says Jesus Christ, is the most wonderful thing in the world. To know him and to know him forever, says the Westminster Catechism, is the most blessed of experiences. I go further, I don't care whether you're a doctor, or a nurse, or a teacher, or an accountant, whether you're a boy at school, a girl at college, it doesn't really matter.

Your main objective in life is not your profession. If you're a Christian, your main objective is coming to know him. To know this great God who breathed out life, and gave you an ability to live for 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, or whatever it might be, years on Mother Earth before he takes you back to be with himself.

God is willing to be known. And here is Jacob, who for so long has made a convenience of his faith. Yes, in New Testament terms, he's a saved man, but he makes a convenience of his salvation, like so many of us do.

We know that the indwelling Spirit is within our hearts, and that the gifts and callings of God are without repentance, but we tip our cap to the Lord sometimes on a Sunday. We've done our job. We were in the church on a Sunday morning, and you know, that's more or less it.

It doesn't affect us too much, too deeply at other levels. Our commitment is somewhat superficial. In other words, and I'm not being unkind, I speak, I reveal my own heart and my own spiritual inadequacies as well.

We're like Jacob. All the blessings of God, all his protective care while he's with Uncle Laban. And yet, he makes a convenience, I suggest, of his faith.

But here, God, who stalked him down these 14 years, brings him to the Brook Jabbok, this little river that ultimately flows into the Jordan, and its waters are finally caught in the mysterious Dead Sea. He's brought him to this Brook Jabbok, to the place that ultimately is going to be called Peneo. And God has brought Jacob to an end of himself.

And if you're utterly confused this morning in your spiritual life, and thank God for your confusion, because it's when you're at your wits' end that you often find God is there, and sometimes he'll squeeze you, and squeeze you, and squeeze you, and he'll do it down the months and down the years, simply because you've been so rebellious and so difficult to get to know. And therefore, it's been difficult for God to get to know you. So he adjusts your circumstances until every other prop is taken from under your feet.

And then he reveals himself as the great God, the only true friend, in the sense of being able to grant eternal security that you can ever know during your sojourn on this earth. So Jacob, during this tremendous night, finds himself on his own. Beloved Rachel has been sent across the river, and his other wife, and his servants, and his sheep, and his camels, and his cattle, all his wealth, all his children, they've all been stripped from him.

And he's on his own, and when he looks to the back, or he looks behind him, he's got the impression in his mind of Uncle Laban, who's had murderous intent towards him. There's no return, and in front of him there's Esau, and he's not expecting a good reception, because he dealt badly with his brother 14 years back, and around him there are the marauding primitive tribes who might so easily fall on Jacob and kill him. He looks around, he looks in front, he looks to the back, and there's no hope.

So what do you do? You look up. You look up. And when God strips you of every support, he'll do so just to get you looking up.

And I say that what applied to Jacob and his experience of God yesteryear, it applies to you and to me today. God is stripping you naked of everything. If you're like the Apostle Paul, when he confessed, was it to the Corinthians, he has fightings within and fears without.

And thank God for any situation that makes you utterly confident and reliant on him and him alone. There's preparation for this God encounter. Jacob is removed from every outside help.

And what's more, it seems to me that not only does Jacob, not only is he forced to make some preparation, but he comes to a moment of honesty. It took God 14 years to get from Jacob, in verse 10 of the 32nd chapter of Genesis, these words, I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. And he never said a truer thing.

Jacob, the proverbial human corpse grew, because he had been so twisted, and he had dealt so deceitfully, now comes up with a moment of truth. He looks into his own reflection, or he sees his own reflection in a mirror, and he recoils, and he's face to face with God, and he feels embarrassed. If you want an encounter with God, let me suggest, don't take me too literalistically, you need a Bible in one hand, and a mirror in the other hand.

Take a look at yourself. You know, sometimes we would not dream, most of us, the majority of time, would not dream of being dishonest with other people. But we're so deceitful, as far as our own personality is concerned, and recognizing who we are, and what we have done, and the treachery, and the deceit, and sometimes the carnality that there is within our own hearts.

It's not easy to be honest. I know myself. I can play the part of the hypocrite so very, very easily.

But you see, here, Jacob is being honest. And I think that one of the blocks that stops people appreciating God, is an inability to be honest with themselves, and to recognize that they are utterly unworthy. We sing it, but we sing it as if it were hyperbole.

Amazing grace, how sweet the strain that saved a wretch like me. Do you really believe you're a wretch? If I came up to you after the service and said, Good morning, wretch. Would you take offense? I'm not likely to do so.

But I use the illustration just to emphasize the point. We sing what we don't mean. Jacob, in scripture, is called a worm.

Thou worm, Jacob, worming his way, subterranean fashion, deceitful, everything in secret, working for his own ends. And now he takes a look of himself, and he blushes. I'm unworthy, Lord.

Do you ever take a look at yourself, my friend? Sometimes we in evangelical circles feel that we can be so bigoted. We have a right for our views about this and that. What hymns to sing, what chorus will sing, will not sing, what prejudices we can maintain and not maintain.

And there's such a bigotry that ensnares the soul. And along it becomes a blockage. And what we have is a sort of cosmetic Christianity that never affects the heart.

Is that not so? Be honest with yourself. Somebody gave me a tape the other day, I confess, yesterday, actually, I played it. I confess to my own shame.

A tape that I was going to analyze critically, put it through the theological sieve and show the weakness of the arguments of the man. He was a Benedictine monk. It's amazing, the tapes that I'm prepared to listen to.

A Benedictine monk, charismatic Catholic. And I thought he'll be way off beam. And after I started to listen to that tape for a few minutes, I forgot the fact that he was a Catholic and a monk.

And took him as being a brother in Christ, because he was ministering to my own heart. The meeting I would never have attended myself if you'd invited me became a meeting through which God spoke to me. And I had to repent of my bigotry.

Oh, I know, that illustration brings its own theological problems, but nonetheless it emphasizes the point, my friend, that sometimes we have such a bigoted attitude that God can't break through our evangelical screen of prejudices. And I suggest that when we take a look at ourselves and we recognize that sometimes we're ugly, then God can do something with us and reveal himself to us in an eye you encounter. He was Jacob with an honesty of soul, responding to the Lord.

Do you remember the experience of Isaiah? When Isaiah, you meet him in the opening chapters of the prophecy that bears his name, is going around Jerusalem, he's able to say, woe unto the cities of Jerusalem, woe this, woe the other, and so forth, until the time comes when he has an experience of God in his glory. He sees the Lord of hosts high in the heavens, and his next woe is directed inward. Woe am I, for I am undone.

If you're going to experience a theophany, if you're going to know God, then you'll feel somewhat embarrassed yourself, and you'll forget about your prejudices, and you'll forget about other people, for your own sole concern will be for God to deal with you. I pray God to make it so real in my own life that I strip myself of prejudices, and come before his word and his throne, and say, Lord, take me as I am, and reveal yourself more and more to me, human clay so fallible, a vessel that's so ugly, but Lord, you did it for Jacob. You can do it for me, reveal yourself.

And then what happens? Well, you see, in this theophany, in this encounter with God, God treats the stubborn streak in Jacob's temperament. You know, to say, for me to live is Christ, means that you allow the ego to be absolutely ruptured, don't you? For me to live is Christ. That means I surrender my rights, in terms of the way that I've controlled my life heretofore.

Now, Jacob's great problem was he declared UDI. He was independent of God. I speak not racially, it applies to some of the British as well, that the Jewish temperament is one of initiative, is one of enterprise.

That's why they have produced some of the greatest brains and some of the greatest inventions that historically we have ever known. But they're people who very often want to cut loose and do things themselves. And it's the independence of Jacob that God has to confront while he's there for 14 years in the household of Uncle Laban.

And that night when God reveals Himself to Jacob by the brook Jabbok, Jacob's independence is crippled. I don't know what's the stubborn area of your nature. You must know it yourself.

Where is that area of your personality that needs to be treated by God? What did God do to Jacob? At one point He touched his limb, his thigh, and the socket was ruptured. And he was unable, as a result, to continue to walk. God touched the strongest point in Joseph's body, in Jacob's body, and crippled him.

And that was perhaps symbolic of his temperament, the independent nature of Jacob, which had to be treated so that instead of wrestling as Jacob had been doing all the years of his life, he now starts to cling. No more wrestling for Jacob, only clinging. And if God will make you a clinger, then I suggest it will be more easy for you to have experiences of Him and of His grace, total reliance on the person of God.

That's necessary for us to know Him more and more. Don't wrestle, just nestle, as one commentator puts it, without claiming to be clever with the English language. And then cultivate an affinity with the Lord.

Cultivate an affinity with the Lord. Can two walk together except they be agreed? That question needs to be put to Jacob. No, he can't walk with God closely in the attitudes that he's had to this point in time.

There's so much about him that embarrasses God. You couldn't have said of God prior to this experience that He was unashamed to call Jacob His son. And if you and if I are to be people who will know God, then we have to cultivate an affinity with the Lord so that what He likes, we like.

We correct our lives in accordance with that dictate. They said of Richard Sibbes, who was a great Puritan preacher, who ministered in the city of London and took on the Anglican establishment when it was going Anglo-Catholic, and he was an Evangelical Anglican, they said of Sibbes, of this just man let this be written, heaven was in him before he was in heaven. Of this just man let this be written, heaven was in him before he was in heaven.

In other words, he had such an affinity of soul with the Lord that it was marked, it was stamped upon his nature. And Jacob becomes more like God after this experience. He's still got flaws in his temperament, but nonetheless there's more of an approximation between God and himself after this experience.

If you're going to have an encounter with God, then you need to come to grips with His word, with His word. Do you remember a previous experience Jacob had when he saw a ladder coming from heaven to earth and the angels ascending and descending? This was God indicating visibly to Jacob that He is in contact with those who will seek Him. And God is still in contact.

Some of us need to be pardoned of the sin of believing that to serve God in Jacob's day would be easier than to serve God in our day because God, or rather Jacob, hears the literal voice of God and has a physical encounter with Him. I believe that Jacob would trade a thousand penials for the copy of God's word which you and I have. The full revelation of the purposes of God are included from Genesis through to Revelation.

Don't trip over the fact that you perhaps have not physically, vocally heard God speaking. When He speaks so eloquently in His word, when Jacob talks to God in the prayer prior to the incident that I read earlier in this chapter, he quotes God's word. And it's one commentator, I think it's Matthew Henry who says that when you quote God's word, you've got Him trapped.

And he says that very lovingly and very humbly. You see, the promises of God, they won't be rescinded. And God does speak through His word.

To quote David Pawson, generally speaking, God is always generally speaking. And that's quite true. He speaks through His word.

Do you listen to Him speak? I open His word in the morning or in an afternoon or whenever during the day. And usually I've got a pen. And those of you who don't like marking books, forget what I'm going to say at the moment.

I use my books. And seeing as I pay for them, I have every right to treat them as I want. Thank you very much.

There's a bit of Yorkshire coming out there. I take a yellow marker and I mark God's word when it speaks to my soul. This is the living God who talks to Tony Sargent.

I don't understand why He does. But He does speak. Why do I know He speaks? Well, you see, I've read this book so many times.

I'm not boasting. That happens to be the fact. I've just completed 14 years here in the tabernacle.

Last Sunday saw the 14th anniversary. So I'm bound always to be in this book. And the thing that logically I can't explain outside of a spiritual dimension is why this book fascinates me.

But it does. And He will speak. I was down here in an earlier hour this morning praying if you would believe, I perhaps if someone had come in would have thought that I was bereft of my senses, praying from this pulpit to an empty church.

Or seemingly. Praying to God that I might experience Him here. And that we all might experience Him here.

Because He's the God who still speaks. I don't know why He takes the foolishness of preaching as being one of the media through which He communicates His word. But He does.

And it's so, so very, very important that we hear Him speak through the exposition of Scripture as well as in our private devotions and reading from God's word. You remember that lovely little incident where Samuel as a child is in the sanctuary at Shiloh and he hears a voice that he takes to be Eli's and ultimately he realizes because Eli's a good teacher that it's God's. And so he says finally speak Lord for your servant heareth.

And I appreciate this remark. I took it from the Benedictine monk. He said you know what? We get it wrong today.

We're so often saying hear Lord for your servant speaketh. Whereas Samuel got it right. Speak Lord for your servant heareth.

When you experience God He speaks. He impresses His thoughts upon your mind. And you know because they're so definite that this has not sprung into your mind as a result of your own manufacture.

This is God communicating to you dynamically by His Spirit. Horizontally through His word. But this God He will speak to those who will listen.

To those who will listen. I do believe in the experience of God today. I believe in pineals.

I don't believe that everyone has exactly the same experience of God. And if yours has different permutations from mine then God bless you brother. And if you can help me deeper into a knowledge of God then I'm your scholar.

Come and teach me until you've taught me all that you know of this great God and this experience of God. The Bible says through the lips of our blessed Lord Jesus blessed are they that hunger and thirst for they shall be filled. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

Our Lord Jesus Christ would not fool us. He wouldn't have said it if it wasn't possible. So I ask you again.

Pursue God individually. Not just corporately. It's the pursuit of God when you're on your own that is even more wonderful and more beneficial than knowing God corporately.

If you have always to depend on your brothers and sisters and the community gathering in such a place as this then your experience of God is so very limited. You need to know Him on your own. And that sometimes will make you do things that might have sounded silly when I illustrated being down here in a very early hour of this morning praying on my own in this sanctuary.

It sounds daft. Nobody there. But He was there.

And I don't use that illustration. God forgive me if it sounds pious just for that. But to make the point you may be a housewife and you're almost exploding with indignation.

Who does He think He is? He hasn't got any children. He doesn't know what it's like to try and get a few moments on my own. Well, I trust I'm not that insensitive.

But there are times if you want to make time when you can be with God. There are times, you know, when you could wake up in the middle of the night if it was necessary to be with God. Because the most important thing in life, I finish where I started off, whether you're a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, a pupil, a mother, a father, whoever you are in this congregation is to know Him.

And know Him for yourself. And God waits to be wanted. Pray God He doesn't wait too long.

Amen. 2-5-5 verses 3 and 4. Amen. And Lord God, that's what we want.

A dynamic encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ bringing us into Your immediate presence, enabling us to worship You, and knowing the increasing filling of Your Spirit ever assuring us that we are born of God. So that come wind, come weather, come health, come sickness, come eventual death, we have no fear for the Lord is our shepherd and there is no need to be distressed. Oh God of Jacob, be our God.

God who deals with men and women who often live at the level of worms, lift us out from the subterranean darkness and give us a sense of Your presence. As Jacob limped on into the sunshine, help us to go through life with a mark of God upon our personalities. Amen.