Experiencing God No.5 The need for Theophany

Genesis chapter 48 And briefly to set the scene Jacob is just coming to the end of his long and active life here and the sons of his son Joseph are now being presented before him in order that he might bless them. Genesis chapter 48 and beginning to read at verse 9 They are the sons God has given me here Joseph said to his father Jacob Then Israel, that's Jacob, said Bring them to me so that I may bless them Now Israel's eyes were failing because of old age and he could hardly see So Joseph brought his sons close to him and his father kissed them and embraced them Israel said to Joseph I never expected to see your face again and now God has allowed me to see your children too Then Joseph removed them from Israel's knees and bowed down with his face to the ground and Joseph took both of them Ephraim on his right towards Israel's left hand and Manasseh on his left towards Israel's right hand and brought them close to him But Israel reached out his right hand and put it on Ephraim's head though he was the younger and crossing his arms he put his left hand on Manasseh's head even though Manasseh was the firstborn Then he blessed Joseph and said May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day the angel who has delivered me from all harm may he bless these boys May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac and may they increase greatly upon the earth When Joseph saw his father placing his right hand on Ephraim's head he was displeased so he took hold of his father's hand to move it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head Joseph said to him No my father this one is the firstborn put your right hand on his head but his father refused and said I know my son I know he too will become a people and he too will become great nevertheless his younger brother will be greater than he and his descendants will become a group of nations he blessed them that day and said in your name will Israel pronounce this blessing may God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh so he put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh then Israel said to Joseph I am about to die but God will be with you and take you back to the land of your fathers and to you as one who is over your brothers I give the ridge of land I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow now may God add his blessing to that reading from his word we're very glad to welcome into our church family the younger of the land families so many land families around Worthing would you like to come forward Nigel and Debbie please and I think Timothy is better with Grandad 1 or Grandad 2 let's show the congregation first look at this gorgeous little girl here say hello to the folks this is Georgina Nigel and Debbie is it your wish to give thanks to God for the gift of this little life and you promise as best as you can by God's grace to bring her up in such an atmosphere that when she becomes mature she'll put her trust in the Lord Jesus and would you like the prayers of your Christian friends to this end well let's just pray and pray not only for Georgina Timothy and the whole of the family circle loving God we do praise you for so many ways in which you are blessing folks here at the tab and we want to thank you particularly now for Nigel and Debbie for their family for Timothy and for this little lassie Georgina we bring her to you we thank you for a healthy life we thank you for a sound mind and we pray that as she grows up she may grow physically strong and mentally strong and spiritually may she become a woman of God in later years we ask that you'll bless Nigel and Debbie particularly to this end as you've gifted them with another little life to look after grant them wisdom and may their home be a place where the peace of God is experienced so Father hear these our prayers and bless this little girl now as we bring her to you in the name of the Triune God Father, Son and Holy Spirit Amen Amen Now you might care to have your Bibles I'll be moving around a little bit in Scripture this morning open at Genesis chapter 32 once again I'm taking you back to that extraordinary experience of Jacob at Peniel where he had a most remarkable encounter with God and we have been learning during these past Sunday mornings at the Tabernacle that an encounter with God expressed theologically is known as a Theophany a God Appearance and it's the Apostle Paul who tells us in Ephesians chapter 1 which has been really the launching pad for this little series though I've yet to deal with the verse itself I'm just giving background information we found there the Apostle saying to the Lord on behalf of the Christians at Ephesus 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 and really I've spent 5 weeks just trying to introduce what Paul means by that expression so that you might know Him better time and time again I've mentioned to you that it's not sufficient to know the Word of God it is more appropriate for us to have as our target to come before the God of the Word and you recall that Jacob when he's on his way back from spending 14 years with Uncle Laban terrified as to what meets him in his own home country because of the way that he dealt with Esau has this experience by the Brook Jabbok in which when his wives have gone in front of him and his servants have gone before and he's utterly on his own during the lengthy hours of the night with the stars in the sky as his canopy as his covering he has this mysterious theophany this encounter with God and he goes on into the rest of his life and he's in his 7th decade now so he's hardly a young person he goes on with a greater understanding of God indeed I would argue that Peniel this experience is pivotal for Jacob he's never the same again and this is the reason why we need to experience ourselves in some measure and regularly theophanies so I want to try to answer the question amongst two other questions this morning why is theophany so important? why is theophany so important? and I answer from Genesis 32 and from the rest of Scripture I indeed from Paul's letter to the Ephesians that first of all it's important because it ennobles a man it ennobles a man now I need to bring this point out because it takes a long time to expound and there inadequately even as a result a passage like chapter 32 of Genesis and last Sunday morning I was dealing with the utter unworthiness that a man feels in the presence of God Jacob you remember confesses this in the 10th verse I'm unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant and indeed he was wretched, he was a worm that's what Scripture describes him as being thou worm Jacob but you don't have a theophany to underline your wretchedness you see a theophany ultimately ennobles a person let me take this again a little more slowly and approach it from a different angle the reason why we preach the gospel is not to make people feel guilty no that's one of the byproducts of the gospel in fact it's perhaps the main thing that happens when you first are confronted with the message of the evangel you feel absolutely guilty the horror of my sin but the man who only preaches to stimulate guilt is not preaching a true comprehensive gospel for Jesus died not to make us feel guilty but he died so that we might be forgiven so that we might bask in being forgiven and when you have a theophany it's not to make you feel wretched but rather it has its ultimate consequence of ennobling you and so you've got this man Jacob by the brook Jabbok and when God has been wrestling with him during the hours of the evening and on into the morning he changes Jacob's name look at verse 28 then the man said your name will no longer be Jacob twister, supplanter, but Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome what happened during that remarkable encounter with God well to quote Charles Spurgeon God knighted Jacob no longer shall you be Jacob but you will be lifted up and we will call you Israel and Israel means prince could you ever conceive that Jacob might be made a prince with God but this is what I mean you see my friend when I say that having an experience of God it ennobles one we recognize what we were like Paul says in Ephesians 3 once you were darkness but now, now you're light in the Lord he has made us to be kings and priests unto himself and ultimately we shall reign with our Lord Jesus Christ in a future age which is yet to dawn so one of the reasons I argue why a theophany is so necessary is because it ennobles a man you recognize what you have become because this great God has encountered you he's revealed himself to you but then again I argue a theophany has as its advantage it distinguishes a man it distinguishes a man now I admit to some degree that's built into the first thing but it needs to be elaborated watch Jacob no watch Israel as he limps away from his encounter with God you get the picture at the end of the 32nd chapter the sun rose above him verse 31 as he passed Peniel and he was limping because of his hip he moved out into the emerging sunshine and that becomes almost parabolic for Israel he's going to move on more and more into the sunshine of the purposes of God and when you see Israel when you see this rejuvenated man and you compare him with any others then there's something I say that marks him out there's something that distinguishes him let the years roll by and come towards the end of Jacob's reasonably lengthy life and you find that now he is in Egypt he's gone there you recall because well he's discovered that his long lost son thought to be dead Joseph has been found and not only is he safe but he's a man of great prominence and ultimately the summons comes from Joseph to his father Israel come down into Egypt and when he comes to Egypt what happens? well the first person almost who greets Jacob Israel is none other than Pharaoh you read the story in the 47th chapter of this book now you might have thought that Joseph would have wanted to have kept his father in the background after all he's an old and he's a decrepit and lame man he spent all his life in tents and looking after sheep he's not aware of the sophistication the wisdom of the royal palace at Egypt what can he possibly have in common with Pharaoh but when Pharaoh meets Israel you discover how the king of Egypt is submissive to the blessing of Israel of Jacob the 7 and 8 of Genesis 47 then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh after Jacob blessed Pharaoh Pharaoh asked him how old are you? Pharaoh submits to the blessing of Jacob here is the most important man in the world in those days at that very moment a pyramid which is in effect a tomb is being constructed so the mortal remains of Pharaoh shall outlast his civilization and so he shall have a place so he thinks eternally in the annals of the gods here is this great man Pharaoh and here's Jacob when Israel dies he'll be buried in some cave back in the land that God gave Abraham and yet there's very little that either Abraham or Jacob ever came to own in their own earthly pilgrimage and yet when these two Pharaoh and Israel are placed side by side two kings one in the eyes of man and the other in the eyes of God it's Israel who's distinguished because you see Jacob has had a theophany he's had an encounter with God there's something that marks him out as being different from other people and I suggest my friend that that is exactly the case today the man who has known God not only is he ennobled by God no longer a sinner but a prince no longer a wretch but one who will inherit all the blessings of heaven but there's something that distinguishes that man there's something that distinguishes this woman it is known it is observable that they have kept company with God I was reading the biography a little while ago or going through it once more I read it some years back of Duncan Campbell a great man who was used by God particularly in the island of the Hebrides as well as in other parts of Scotland and he was to see revivals in his ministry and the biographer quoting someone with whom he came across speaking of Duncan Campbell he had this to say this man had a beautiful me that I craved and it had nothing to do with his face or his human characteristics he went on to say in the congregation he was actually looking at the back of Campbell and yet there was something about Duncan Campbell when I got to know him more which became indistinguishable or so it seemed to me from Christ himself I never saw God until that day when God manifested himself through Duncan Campbell and in the days that followed the vision lingered and haunted me till I was found by God I've heard other men preach more earnestly and sincerely and with honest endeavour and they've affected my thoughts and ideas but the reality I discovered that day was embodied in a personality the man Campbell made without me knowing it he made me to face truth and reality personified and this left me facing Christ a man distinguished by God because he's had an encounter with Him not merely in the words you say not only in your deeds confessed but in the most unconscious ways Christ expressed for me it was not the truth you taught to you so clear to me still dim but when you came to me you brought a sense of Him that's why theophany is important so that having been ennobled by God you may be so distinguished that as Israel limped into the sunshine with a mark of God physically upon Him so you can limp away into the remaining years of your life with God's mark upon you another reason I argue why you need to have a theophany and many of them is this it eliminates the fear of death it eliminates the fear of death the man who has had an encounter with God the woman who has had encounters with the living Christ are people who have been eliminated from the fear of death you come back to that passage to which our attention was drawn earlier in Andrew's reading the 48th chapter of Genesis and here you discover Jacob now very much towards the evening of his life there are few sands left in the glass and you find there is not a trace of fear whatsoever go to the earlier verses just in the 47th chapter he's speaking to his son his favorite son Joseph and he says halfway through verse 29 or rather at the beginning of 29 when the time drew near for Israel to die he called for his son Joseph and said if I have found favor in your eyes put your hand under my thigh and promise that you will show me kindness and faithfulness do not bury me in Egypt but when I rest with my fathers carry me out of Egypt and bury me where they are buried and then in the 21st verse of the following chapter again the same idea in mind then Israel, Jacob says to Joseph I am about to die but God will be with you and take you back to the land of your fathers and to you as one who is over your brothers I give and so forth and on to the 49th chapter and then to the 29th verse you get the same thing then he gave them these instructions I am about to be gathered to my people bury me with my fathers in the cave in the cave in the field of Makalpah near Mamre in Canaan which Abraham brought as a burial place from Ephron the Hittite along with the field I am about to die but God will be with you nothing in God dies when a man of God dies and when a man of God dies in God it's just his earthly body that gives out his soul goes into the presence of almighty God and when you realize that as a result of your theophany when you've had a taste of his presence then death holds no fear for you you may be afraid of the pain you may be afraid of a cancerous condition that's fair enough, we're human but the passing from this life across into Emmanuel's land it holds no fear for the man, the woman who has had a theophany absent from the body present with the Lord says the mighty apostle Paul as he's writing to the Philippians I have a problem my problem is simply this I've known God so much and I want to know him more and therefore when I've got this trial at Rome and I'm waiting the outcome I'm in a split mind I don't know whether I want a verdict of guilt or a verdict of discharge because if I'm guilty they'll dispatch me and if I'm dispatched I'll go to be with Christ which is to be in a far better condition and this I know, why? because I've known him in some fashion in this world I've lived in his power I've lived under his covering and as I've known him now I want to know him more and more and more you see the point my friend this is what a theophany does when you know the experience of God when God is real to you when you've had the touch of God upon your soul then I say it ennobles you once you were a sinner a wretched man like a worm but he lifts you and he gives you a mighty inheritance once you were a no person but now you have the mark of God upon you once you were afraid of death itself but now without being melancholy you can welcome death you can be like that mighty preacher Samuel Rutherford who you recall or some of you will recall ministered in Scotland in the 17th century he ran into trouble as a gospel preacher he loved Jesus and that got him into difficulties but he wasn't prepared to trade his love for Jesus to some pawn of a king who wanted him to stop preaching rather his love for Jesus Christ was the dominant message that he proclaimed from his pulpit in his beloved town in Anworth often yon sea beat prison he says my Lord and I held Christ for Anworth was not heaven and preaching was not Christ and I my murkiest storm cloud was by a rainbow spanned caught from the glory dwelling in Emmanuel's land fair Anworth by the Solway to me thou art still dear in from the verge of heaven I'll drop for thee a tear oh if one soul from Anworth meet me at God's right hand my heaven will be two heavens in Emmanuel's land here's a man and he wants to encounter God he's had an experience he's had many experiences but he's not satisfied he's waiting for the absolute experience when he's face to face with his living Christ I've wrestled on toward heaven gained storm and wind and tide now like a weary traveller that leaneth on his guide amid the shades of evening while sinks life lingering sand I hail the glory dwelling from Emmanuel's land ah but he's an honest man it's not easy in Anworth to preach Christ not easy to remain true to Jesus here in Worthing particularly if you're older in years and your body's already giving indications of its weakness and its frailty and so he goes on deep waters crossed life's pathway the hedge of thorns was sharp now these all lie behind me oh for a well-tuned harp oh to join hallelujah with young triumphant band who sing where glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land and then the summons comes to stand before the king but he's nearly dead and so these are Rutherford's final words made into poetry they've summoned me before them but there I may not come my lord says come up hither my lord says welcome home my kingly king at his white throne my presence doth command where glory glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land I tell you you can anticipate death without foreboding when you have an increased experience of the nearness of God that's why theophany is so important but why is it so difficult? why is it so difficult to experience this closeness? can I suggest from Jacob's experience and from other scriptures which I could bring to bear witness if there was time that one of the reasons is because we put up a continual resistance against insurmountable forces God's forces are insurmountable but sometimes we can struggle against him this is what Jacob had been doing right up to Peniel Jacob the wrestler Jacob the struggler Jacob the man who doesn't give in it's crass folly not to give in to God but we're as guilty of that as were the citizens of Jerusalem you remember the words of our blessed lord Jesus how oft would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathereth her chicks but you would not I would but you wouldn't and it seems to me that there is the fulcrum that's the point where sometimes we've got the balance wrong oh yes I know God is sovereign but he does not annihilate human responsibility I would but you wouldn't and that describes Joseph right up to Peniel God would but I won't I won't I won't I'll live for 14 years in the company of Laban and my theology will be the theology of a safety net and the safety net only comes into operation when you fall from the high wire and some of us are like that my friend I speak lovingly and I speak to myself a safety net theology good to know that he's there good to know that I'm saved if I fall a little bit then I can come right down but for a moment for a year for 10 years let me do the balancing act on my own a safety net theology not a day by day utter dependence on the living God we struggle against that Jesus says take my yoke upon you and instead of taking and submitting as ultimately we have to as Jacob ultimately had to submit to God we struggle and what happens when the ark struggles against the yoke well the sores on his neck they become that much more irritable and he causes that much more pain for himself and that's the situation with many of us we resist him we resist his will we struggle as Jacob struggled during the earlier years of his life but Jesus says take my yoke upon you and you know something there's no such thing as a single yoke it's a double yoke you get oxen yoked together and the one who draws alongside is none other than the blessed savior my yoke is easy and what's more I don't call you to to plow a furrow on your own I'm by your side I'm going to do it with you wear the yoke I'm wearing it you wear it too and as you see Israel limping off into the sunshine you find that he's got God alongside and he's responded to the invitation that had come time and time again and again in earlier years Jacob let's do it together but there was that resistance you see don't you find it so in your own life my friend oh yes you know the theological statements you're more aware of this than the preacher is but there's one thing to know a theological statement and there's another thing to work it out take my yoke upon you you say you never have a theophany you never experience the closeness of God or only infrequently I say that one of the reasons probably is that you resist him and what's more you dislike brokenness dislike brokenness because God can never use a man until he's broken him the loaves and the fishes the little boy brings to Jesus are broken before even the Lord can use it to feed a multitude I don't believe in the transubstantiation of bread like our Catholic friends do but I do believe in the transubstantiation of the body in other words that Jesus takes residence but the Lord Jesus will never presence himself with me until he possesses my life a man can never be used by God until God has conquered him and it's the conquest by God of every aspect of our personality that we revolt against because we have our old sinful Adamic nature we want to go alone even though we claim to be Christian people we slot in a UDI and say alright Lord but don't get too close I don't want to be broken and you can never fully know God until there is an element of brokenness in your life God cannot use a man until he's conquered him as Watchman Nee says the trouble with many of us today is we have an insufficient idea of what God is asking from us so I say that one or two of the reasons why this is so difficult to experience is because often we put up a continual resistance against God and we dislike to be broken but finally my last two minutes here are factors to encourage from the example of Jacob and other men whose stories I could bring to bear in upon this and the two factors are these the man and the place let's reverse them take the place first of all Jabbok can you think of a more unlikely spot on God's earth than Jabbok for God to draw alongside you see we live in the 20th century and we're so conditioned it's very difficult for us to realize how we're conditioned to respond in the way that the advertising men want us to respond to their adverts in the press in the media we respond when we're corporately together maybe in some auditorium and we hear something of the majesty of one of the symphonies of Beethoven or as I was listening earlier on this morning to Bach's B Minor Mass and don't let that worry you because Bach was a Protestant not a Catholic and the Mass didn't exactly mean the same to him as what it means to some people today we're conditioned by our environment but look at Jabbok there's no conditioning here that's artificial just the canopy of the starry sky just the babbling of the Jabbok as it makes its way down to Jordan and ultimately turns into the Dead Sea and in that most unlikely spot God met with a rogue and made him a knight Bunyan spent 14 years in Bedford jail until the judge wouldn't listen to the pleading of his wife and in Bedford jail he wrote Pilgrim's Progress your Jabbok your Peniel can be the sixth form college when you're on your own one day in a classroom it can be the kitchen as a housewife it can be behind a desk as a businessman behind a counter as a shop attendant and so on and so forth God has the most unlikely places to presence himself when Khary Tembun and her sister went to Ravensbrook concentration camp little did they know that God was there when Wurmbrand was in his rat infested cell little did he know that God would be so real that he would dance for joy in the very presence of the rats that's what I want to know more and more God's so real that it doesn't matter what the circumstances are thank God for corporate worship but if you're depending on the worship of your brothers and sisters to stimulate an emotional reaction in your heart then of all men you're most miserable God is known corporately as we worship him I am not decrying that but the most wonderful naked experience of God is when a man is on his own in utterly unpredictable circumstances when God draws near that's the place an unlikely one the man well look at the character a worm he's referred to and yet you may be a man as crafty as Jacob a bargain hunter controlled by the ego having gone from one disappointment to another but if you'll quit resisting then God can break into your life in a way that you've never known heretofore if you go down the road here you'll find a shop that's been taken over by somebody else just at the side of the cycle shop there forget its name and I recall reading some while ago as I was going by a little notice and it said of the shop under new management as though the very building was proud that it was going to get a change of occupation and the service rendered within the precincts may be superior to what had been known before do you know what happened at Penoe? Jacob went under a new management no longer him though he was not eliminated it was God and Jacob, no it was God and Israel may it be as a result of a theophany of an experience of God you might come under a closer management of your life by your Heavenly Father God grant to us to know Him more and more more and more Amen I pray I pray to you also He brings the poor and sinner into His house also I know you understand the deeper glory the deeper I will send out the happy all the glory of Him that lives in me not merely in the words you say not only in your deeds confessed but in the most unconscious way as Christ expressed for me it was not the truth you taught to you so clear to me still dim but when you came to me you brought a sense of Him Father may that be the experience of all of us at the tab and what we can't communicate by word let us radiate through personality for Jesus sake Amen