Amen. Good morning, saints.
I almost feel like we’re going to have a one-on-one session this morning, so few are with us. The Lord is gracious, and I am glad we sang that song to the Father. All morning we talked about His Son, and it was good to recognize Him for a moment.
He is the One who listens and responds when the High Priest comes before Him. That is why we come into the good of all Jesus has done: the Father is pleased with His work, pleased with Him, and pleased to bless us with all the blessings that He intends to bless His Son with. So praise the Lord this morning.
Can we begin with prayer?
Lord, we are grateful to Thee. Lord, I heard that song this morning; it always touches my heart: “Oh, happy day when Jesus washed my sins away.”
Lord, how we worship Thee this morning. How joyful we are in our hearts for what You have done. Lord, this table that You provided keeps us fresh before You and keeps us in communion with Thee. Lord, how we worship Thee for Your care and love, which You have given to us and expressed through Your great High Priest, Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now we come before Thee this morning, Lord. We do not want to come in the energy of the flesh or of the mind, but truly by Your Spirit we want to speak and hear this morning. May Your Holy Spirit, Lord, fill our hearts. May Your Holy Spirit fill this place, Lord, that we might truly hear what You have to say. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, I am so grateful that the Lord has not determined to have a school of academics, where the great brains are the ones who succeed. But He has chosen to have a people—a people of experience; people who may not have such great brains and intelligence, but people who can respond to Him, people who love Him, people of experience with Him and not merely an academic knowledge of Him.
That is what we have been sharing throughout these messages from the book of Genesis. The whole purpose is that we might know Him, that we might come to know who God is and see who He is—particularly, recently, in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We want to see God’s ways and know His ways: to really know Him and experience Him.
Life is not about getting up and making it through the day. Life is about experiencing Christ. So may the Lord encourage us this morning out of His Word.
I want to begin in Genesis, and we are going to backtrack just a little bit. Let us turn to Genesis 25:23-26.
And the Lord said unto her,
Two nations are in thy womb,
And two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels;
And the one people shall be stronger than the other people;
And the elder shall serve the younger.And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.
And the first came forth red, all over like a hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.
And after that came forth his brother, and his hand had hold on Esau’s heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.
You see here the birth of Jacob. Esau comes first, and then Jacob comes out holding a death grip on his brother’s ankle. He comes out second.
Now let us turn to Genesis 47:9.
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years: few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.
We have been in these Scriptures, so y’all are familiar with them. This is when Jacob has finally come down to Egypt, realizes Joseph is alive, and comes before Pharaoh. His testimony is this: “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years. Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.”
Now let us turn to Hebrews 11:21.
By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
By faith, when he was dying, Jacob blessed both the sons of Joseph and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
Last time, as you may or may not remember, we were summing up the life of Isaac. Jacob had deceived his father. Esau found out and was angry with his brother, so they sent Jacob away for two reasons.
First, they wanted him to escape the wrath of his brother, because Esau was angry enough to kill him. Second, they wanted him to have a wife from the family, from the right bloodline. We have talked before about how important this bloodline was in order for the promised Seed to come forth.
Isaac was determined to give the blessing to Esau, even though God had said, “The elder shall serve the younger.” He determined to give the blessing backwards from what God had decided.
That is interesting, because somehow in his life Isaac had lost sight of what God was really after—God’s real purpose. He was going through life just as we do, but that purpose of God had faded in his mind and heart. What he was about to do was opposed to God’s heart and God’s will.
Rebekah, of course, tricked him. She brought Jacob forward and said, “Now you go fix some stew for your father like Esau would fix, and put that fur on your arms. He will think it is Esau who is coming.” Actually, it was Jacob’s mother who thought up this scheme, not Jacob. Jacob went along with it, though he was a little afraid.
He said, “Look, Mother, if Dad finds out what is going on, he is not going to have much mercy.” But his mother encouraged him to go ahead and do it. In the end, Isaac was tricked into blessing the right son.
Right as Jacob was being sent away, Isaac blessed him with the blessing of Abraham. That is so critical and so important. So that is where we were last time.
Today is really an introduction to the life of Jacob. But we need to remember this: God said that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is one of His names; that is the way He presents Himself:
I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
These three men represent God as a testimony on this earth, and it takes all three of them to present a full testimony of who God is. Abraham alone and Isaac alone are not enough. It also takes the life of Jacob.
In a sense, it is a picture that what God really needs is something corporate in nature—a corporate testimony—because no one man can have the full testimony. If we want to see God in His fullness, if we want to know God’s ways, we need to look not only at Abraham and Isaac, but also at Jacob.
In Abraham, you see God as the Father. He is the Originator of all things. In the beginning, He created. He was the Originator of Abraham’s life. It was not until the God of glory appeared to Abraham that he began his spiritual journey. God initiated it. That is the Father’s heart: He is the Originator and the Initiator.
Abraham was an idolater. He worshipped idols and had no thought concerning God. Yet God initiated with Abraham and appeared to him. That is grace, brothers and sisters. That is grace.
Even the birth of the promised seed was from God. He waited until Sarah and Abraham were both unable to have children. Sarah had been barren all that time, and Abraham too had become unable. Then God initiated the birth of Isaac.
Abraham submitted to God, but it was God who originated even the promised seed. Later, God appeared to Abraham through Melchizedek, and the message was, “Abraham, you are going through all these trials and difficulties in life. I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” That is what life is all about.
Do you know this God who is the God of Abraham? I think surely you would say, “I do,” because God was the One who initiated, came after me, and sought me. It was the Son who died for me. God initiated it in my life.
I love Him, but I found out that He first loved me. When I finally chose Christ, I found out from His Word that I was chosen before the foundation of the earth. He knew me before I was even born.
He is the Initiator of your life—not only your physical life but your spiritual life. He is the God of Abraham, and you know Him. Thank God.
Then we see Isaac. He obviously is a picture of God the Son—the Son of God. Isaac is almost a perfect type. As you know, his birth was spiritual in nature. It was impossible for Abraham and Sarah to have a child, yet God touched Sarah, and Isaac was born. It was the hand of God. Galatians says it was a spiritual birth.
We also see Isaac living a submissive, obedient life. Finally, his father takes him to Mount Moriah and lays him upon the altar. What a picture of Christ, as the Father had to see His Son nailed to Calvary’s cross.
Remember how Isaac needed a bride. He did not select his own bride, did he? No. Eliezer, who represents the Holy Spirit, had to go out, prepare a bride, and bring a bride back to Isaac. Remember the story: he immediately fell in love. As soon as they saw one another, it was a great love story.
That is our Lord Jesus Christ. We know in the book of Revelation that the New Jerusalem will be presented to Christ as a bride. So Isaac represents the Son of God as a testimony.
Isaac inherited all things. He received all things. It speaks of God’s grace.
Now you know, brothers and sisters, the God of Isaac, because it says in the Word of God that all spiritual blessings have been granted to us in Christ. When you receive the Lord Jesus Christ, you receive Him. All the blessings and spiritual work of Calvary’s cross are in Christ Jesus. Therefore, you also receive all spiritual blessings, and all the inheritance of Christ is yours as well.
What an amazing thing God has done. All this has been made available, and it is not something that you had to attain to. It is something freely given by grace: the God of Isaac.
You are in Christ because God put you there. Christ is in you because God put Him in you. God initiated, but Christ is there. Because you have Christ, you have all the inheritance. All things are given to you.
We are somewhat familiar with these two: Abraham as the Originator, and Isaac as the One who never had to attain but simply received. Brothers and sisters, we learn that it is not by our doing or our attaining, but by God in Christ that we have reached this point in our lives.
So now, what does Jacob represent?
As you look at his life, you see that he had a pretty difficult life. Most of the difficulty was due to his own doing. But in the life of Jacob we see the third Person of the Godhead: God the Holy Spirit. We see the Holy Spirit working and transforming—transforming Jacob into Israel, transforming the supplanter Jacob into Israel, a prince with God.
Jacob went from being a schemer, a manipulator, a sly fox, if you want to say it, to a man leaning on his staff and worshipping God. He went from being a self-reliant, self-worshipping man to a God-dependent, God-worshipping man.
But, brothers and sisters, it took twenty years of discipline—twenty years of heartbreaks, disappointments, trials, and tribulations.
Then at Peniel, you remember, he met a Man and wrestled with Him all night. This was twenty years after he had left. The Lord touched his thigh—He touched his strength—and Jacob was no longer quite the same self-reliant man that he had been.
We need to see who Jacob is because, brothers and sisters, we do not tend to think of ourselves as Jacob. We do not see ourselves as schemers, manipulators, and cheaters. At least we try not to be that way. But that is not the essence here.
God had told Jacob’s mother that the elder would serve the younger. These boys were told that. Yet when the twins were born, Jacob came out second. He was destined to be first, but he came out second. Still, he was holding on. He was grabbing. He wanted to be first.
Because of that innate desire to be firstborn, and because he did not have the birthright, when it came time for his father officially to give that birthright to the oldest son, Jacob had to agree with his mother: “Something is wrong here. It is God’s will that Esau serve me. It is God’s will that I be first.”
I am not even sure he did it in a bragging way, but that thought was there, and it was God’s thought. It was what God wanted. Dad was going in another direction. He was about to make a terrible mistake.
So Jacob reasoned, “Mom, the scheme you thought of is okay. I am a little afraid because Dad might catch us, but it is God’s will, and this is what we need to do.” And he did it.
Here is a man who appreciated the things of God. He had already obtained the birthright from his brother. Remember that?
His brother had gone out, was tired and hungry, and came back. Jacob said, “I will give you the food I have prepared if you will give me the birthright.” Esau said, “The birthright is not much value if I die from lack of food.” He was a stomach-driven guy. I seem to know a lot about that.
But Jacob understood the value of the birthright.
Do you have a birthright in Christ? Yes, you do. Your birthright is that you might serve, reign, and rule with Him in the kingdom age. That is part of the birthright.
Let us not be like Esau, giving up that opportunity for the things of the world. But you see the difference here: Jacob wanted the birthright because he thought it was his anyway. It was God’s promise, and he was just fulfilling God’s promise.
It is the same with the blessing. That is why he tricked his father. I do not think he was really trying to be mean. He just knew that this was what God wanted, and this was what was necessary to get it—at least in his mind.
When Esau came in and found out that he had lost not only the birthright but also the blessing of the firstborn, he was angry and furious. His mother saw his fury and knew that he could kill Jacob. So she went to her husband and said, “Our son needs a wife from the right bloodline. We need to get him out.” The real motive, of course, was that she did not want to see him killed.
Here is the point, brothers and sisters. Here is a man who loved God and loved the things of God. But there was something in Jacob that he had not gotten right yet. What he had not gotten right was that he had to get it by his own scheming, energy, mind, and manipulation. He went after these things by himself.
I want to make a point here. If you read the life of Jacob, he is never rebuked. You might have thought that when God met him at Bethel, right after he left home, God would have rebuked him and said, “Look, you have cheated your dad.” But He did not do that.
There is a reason. The issue here is not sin. The issue is that natural life we all have—that natural thing, the soul life. It is the life that makes you who you are: your inner self, your mind, your will, and your emotions. It is you.
Jacob was going out trying to achieve God’s things with his self-life. God did not rebuke him because it says in the Word of God that the natural man does not know the things of God, nor can he understand the things of God.
It does no good to rebuke him in this case. What is required is discipline. God knew that if He told Jacob he was wrong, Jacob would not understand, because Jacob felt secure in the fact that he was really pursuing God’s pursuits.
But God began to discipline him. The first thing that happened was that Jacob had to leave home to escape his brother’s fury. He loved home. He was not the type who loved being out in the fields hunting. He wanted to be at home. But as a young man, he had to leave and go away to another place.
He never saw his mother again.
The discipline of the Holy Spirit began to work on Jacob. This transforming work was in process.
On the way, he came to Bethel. You remember the story: he had the dream, and there was a ladder between heaven and earth. That ladder is Christ. Christ is the connection between heaven and earth. Christ is the One who brings heaven down to earth.
That revelation is what kept Jacob through all those years of discipline. I am convinced of that. It was the revelation he had at Bethel that kept him.
Then he went on and actually bargained with God: “All right, now I recognize who You are, and You have told me I can go and that You will bring me back. If You promise to keep Your promise, then I will give You ten percent. I will give You ten percent of everything You give me. Take care of me.”
A bargaining man—that is Jacob. But, brothers and sisters, what I want us to see is that this is us. Regardless of how good we may think we are on the outside, it is that natural energy that permeates everything we do in life.
Jacob came to Laban’s house, and Rachel met him immediately. He immediately fell in love with Rachel. He was enamored with her.
After being there a month, Laban came to him and basically said, “You cannot hang around my house anymore just sitting around. You are going to have to work. Now, you want Rachel. If you work for me for seven years, you can have Rachel.”
Jacob was so enamored with Rachel that the seven years felt like a week, just being around her. He worked those seven hard years—seven years of discipline, the hand of God. At the end of those seven years, he was finally going to have Rachel, the one he loved so much.
Then came the wedding. Brothers, what would you think if there was a woman you had fallen in love with and adored, and you went down the aisle to that veiled bride? You know how we smile when we go down the aisle. We cannot help it. We see our future wife there.
I remember there were a lot of jitters in my stomach when I did it, but I was thrilled. My wife was so thrilled that she never said one of her vows. Either she was thrilled or scared to death, but I remember watching her lips move and nothing ever came out. I told her she was married anyway, because I said the vows.
But can you imagine? They announce man and wife, they lift the veil, and it is not the one. How shocking that would be.
That is what happened. Jacob found out that it was Leah, the oldest daughter, whom he had married. He was crushed. But he was such a determined guy, such a strong-willed man, that he agreed to work another seven years.
He accepted the marriage to Leah, even though he did not love Leah as he loved Rachel. Actually, if you read the Scriptures, the best sons of the twelve tribes came from Leah. She was the one who had sons, while Rachel could not until the very end.
It was another seven years of hard work and discipline under the hand of the Lord. All this time, there was no altar. There was no altar and no real fellowship with the Lord.
Jacob had been fourteen years under the disciplining hand of the Lord, and the discipline went on another six years. He wanted to go back home, but he had nothing. All he had was two wives.
So he agreed to work with Laban some more. He told Laban, “I will take all the spotted and striped cattle and sheep, and you keep the beautiful ones that are all white.” Those were apparently the stronger ones.
It is a long story, but basically Jacob figured out a scheme. He worked it out so that most of the stronger animals produced spotted and striped offspring. The bottom line was that he developed a great herd, more than Laban had.
Six years later, God spoke to him and said, “You need to go.” Jacob took his wives, his cattle, and all that he had, and he left without telling Laban.
Laban finally caught up with him and was angry, but God protected Jacob. God appeared to Laban in a dream and said, “Do not harm Jacob. You let him go.” If it had not been for that, Jacob was a dead man.
Now he had his wives, his concubines, and his cattle. He was quite wealthy at this point. Then he came to Peniel.
At Peniel, the fear of Jacob’s life came upon him. The thing he feared most happened: he received word that his brother Esau was coming to meet him with four hundred men.
He came up with another scheme. He arranged for all his family to precede him, and he was basically prepared to give it all up—his wives, his cattle, and everything—to spare his life. He was at his lowest point.
Discipline had finally gotten through to him a little bit. That is when God met him. But even after wrestling with God all night long, Jacob would not yield.
That shows you how strong this natural man is in us, brothers and sisters. It does not want to yield. It wants to be god of our lives. Even after all the discipline, it still did not want to yield.
Finally, God touched Jacob’s thigh. You remember that story. He touched his thigh, and it weakened him for the rest of his life. He was never quite the same.
Brothers and sisters, there does come a point in our lives—sometimes after many years of discipline—when God does something fundamental in us. He touches this hip, and we are never quite the same again. Not physically, but inside us, the natural man and the natural strength get touched.
Jacob’s brother actually greeted him with open arms. Again, it was God’s work. God had to work in Esau too, to make him say, “It is okay.”
But then Jacob returned home and came back into the land. Who was the love of his life at this point? Joseph. Joseph was the love of his life.
Jacob sent Joseph out to find out how his brothers were doing, with bread and provisions. They threw him in the pit, took the coat of many colors back to their father, and Jacob’s heart was broken. A broken heart.
Sometimes God has to break our hearts, brothers and sisters. Sometimes He just has to in order to get to that natural man that is so strong. It is out of love, of course, that He does this, but Jacob’s heart was broken.
Jacob grieved for many years before he realized Joseph was alive. In the end, his last years were glorious, and we find him leaning on the staff, worshipping God.
When Jacob received word that Joseph was alive, at first he could not believe it. Obviously, we know why: he was a broken-hearted man. But his heart was greatly stirred, and he agreed to go to Egypt.
Yet by then he had been so disciplined by God that, as he started out, he went to God and asked, “Is it okay? Is it okay for me to go?”
God had finally gotten through to him. Jacob was finally willing to yield to God. As much as he wanted to see his son, he was willing to yield to God’s will. He was not going to come up with some scheme to get there anyway. He was willing to stay.
What a work God had finally done in this man.
When Jacob came before Pharaoh, his testimony was, “The days of my life have been evil.” In other words, “I have been dealt with greatly. I have not had much joy. It has been a difficult life.”
Brothers and sisters, you need to know this: the reason his life was so difficult was this natural man. The natural man requires much discipline.
You know why the natural man is so strong and tenacious? The natural man—the good self, if you want to call it that—wants the things of God. It seeks the things of God.
For instance, we know that our sins are forgiven in Christ, and we can freely receive forgiveness by accepting the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ as our sin-bearer. We simply can receive it.
But many will not receive Christ because they think they have to earn it. That is the natural man. He wants to earn it.
Tell me, brothers and sisters, in your life with the Lord, is there not still something in you saying, “Lord, I failed You. I failed You, but I can get it right. I will make it right, Lord”?
Brothers and sisters, you cannot make it right. I do not know what you think you can do, but we all tend to do that. “Lord, I will make it right. I will grieve for seven days. Lord, I will feel bad for seven days.”
It is penance. It is the natural man wanting to be acceptable. God says, “No, My Son’s blood is the only thing that will work in this situation. It is His blood that you have to bring before Me. Then you can be restored.”
That is God’s way. But the natural man says, “No, I have to please God in some way.” Frankly, that is true, but the only way we can please Him is to bring the offering of His only Son back to Him in our stead.
Victory over sin, brothers and sisters—we struggle with that, do we not? Yet according to the Word of God, even victory over sin is a gift. It is a work that has been done on Calvary’s cross by our Lord Jesus Christ. It has been done because He has overcome.
The old man has been crucified—that man in us that so loves to sin. He is gone. He has been crucified.
But we still struggle with sin because we think, somehow, “I can do it. I need to overcome this sin in myself. I just need to do this. I can do it. I have failed five hundred times, but I am going to try one more time.”
The only way to victory is to accept His victory and His work of Calvary, where it says the old man has been crucified. The natural man wants to struggle. It wants to earn it, attain it, and gain it.
Brothers and sisters, we love the Lord, and our motives may be pure and good. We want to do this thing for the Lord. That is not enough if it is coming out of the natural man. It needs to be by the Spirit—the new man.
Do you realize that Christ is in you? That there is a new man in you?
What is the solution? We have to receive it by faith, and we have to yield to the life of Christ in us. Deny self, take up the cross, and follow Him.
Let me explain a little more. I know this might be a little difficult.
The natural man is the life of the soul. It is what animates the soul: your mind, your will, and your emotions. When you accept Christ, you have the life of Christ in you as well.
The natural man is not crucified. The old man is crucified—the one who was a servant of sin. But you still have this natural guy in you, this natural life. If God crucified your natural life, you would not be here; you would be dead, because that is why you are alive.
But this is the life that has been determining your way, thinking, reasoning, willing, and doing all these things throughout your life. Now suddenly, the life of Christ in you wants to supplant that life, and it is a struggle.
How is the natural man dealt with? Through discipline. He is dealt with through the discipline and work of the cross, because the Lord brings things into our lives that cross what we would like to do. Then we have to yield to Him rather than to the natural man’s desires.
It takes the cross to deal with that self-reliant natural man and make room for the life of Christ.
The natural life, brothers and sisters, we have to let go of it and let the life of Christ live. That is easier said than done, because you will say, “How do I know the difference?”
The only way you can probably tell the difference is to say, “Lord, show me. You show me, Lord. Let Your light shine upon me. Lord, I come into Your light because I cannot tell the difference. I do not know if it is me, or You, or the Spirit.”
And He does. The Lord enlightens you, and when it is the natural man, you will know it. That is the way you have to do it. You cannot figure it out yourself. That is the point. Let go of self-analysis; let Christ live.
Let me take one more angle on this, and may the Spirit do it, because I do not want this to be merely a mental exercise this morning.
When Adam was created, he had a natural soul-life. He had a mind to think, a will to use, and emotions. That is why God gave him a choice, and that is why Eve looked at the fruit of the tree and was pleased by it. They had mind, will, and emotion. It was their life; it was what made them who they were.
They were without sin. They were innocent. The self-life in its innocence was not a problem with sin.
But when they fell into sin, when they made that willful choice to disobey God, sin entered into them and they became an old man. Not only was the natural life there, but the old man was there—the slave to sin. Brothers and sisters, we are all born that way now. We receive that same condition from our parents.
The old man was in control. We have already said that the way God deals with the old man is to crucify him with Christ on Calvary’s cross. It is a work done by Christ on Calvary, and we receive it by faith.
That is why there can be victory over sin: the sinner is put out of the way—the old man, the slave to sin. But the natural life is still there. You still have a mind, a will, and emotions. It is very strong. It is used to living by itself, without direction from God, and it does not want to give up the throne.
One more example: our Lord Jesus Christ.
When our Lord came on this earth, He had a mind, will, and emotions. He had the natural life as well. Now, He did not have the old man. He was without sin, but He had the natural life.
Remember what He said in Gethsemane:
Not My will, but Thine, be done.
That is why we know He had His own will. His will had to come in line with God’s will and merge with God’s will, so that it was God’s will coming out of His soul.
He had a mind, but He said in John 5:30:
I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
He had a mind—the most brilliant mind that has ever been—but He said, “I need to know the Father’s mind. My mind needs to be one with His mind. His mind needs to be the one that is responded to.”
He had emotions. We know He wept when Lazarus died. But we also know that He did not immediately go and try to deal with the situation. He went to the Father. I am sure in His heart He was weeping, but He waited. His emotions had to be under the control of the Spirit.
It was all for the glory of God, because He raised Lazarus.
On the cross of Calvary, if the natural man had been in control, as it would be in our lives, He would have crushed and avenged Himself upon the cross. But it was not the natural life. It was God’s life that said:
Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
In other words, He had the Father’s heart. His emotions were under control.
God is trying to transform us. This is what the life of Jacob is all about. He is trying to transform us so that the life of Christ in us is what now animates and fills our soul. It is the life of Christ that is being expressed, not the natural man.
The natural man is still there, but he has been so weakened and put in his place, so to speak, that he stays in the background.
Transformation needs to take place. The character of Christ needs to be worked into us. We freely receive Christ, but that character has to be worked into us. Sometimes it requires a deep wounding in our lives.
Let me end with this. The New Jerusalem—we are all going to be part of that New Jerusalem, brothers and sisters. But what part are you going to be?
What do we see in the New Jerusalem? Gold, precious stones, and pearl. I am sorry, there is no silver in the New Jerusalem. Silver speaks of redemption.
We will know the Redeemer. We will see the nail-scarred hands and feet, the scars on His brow, and the wound in His side. The Lamb is there. But there is no silver there. Why? Because redemption is not an end in itself. Redemption is a means to the end.
What we do see is gold, precious stones, and pearl. Gold is the nature of God—His nature. It is the basic element of the city: golden streets, gold, and crystal shining forth the nature of God.
But we also see precious stones. One of the most precious stones we recognize in the United States is what most married women have on their hands: a diamond ring. It is a precious stone.
Do you know how a diamond is formed? Basically, it is a lump of coal—carbon. When you burn a piece of paper and it turns black, that is carbon. That is the origin of a diamond: basically coal.
Deep in the earth, under tremendous pressure and heat for thousands and thousands of years, this lump of carbon is transformed into a diamond. Through various pressures, some diamonds work their way up into the upper crust, and that is what we mine.
Brothers and sisters, I want to put before you that our souls are like that lump of coal. All they can reflect in the natural man is darkness. It is just a lump of coal, not really of much value. But it can be transformed into a diamond of much value.
What is pearl? The diamond comes through much pressure and much time. We relate that to our trials, troubles, and the things we have to go through.
Pearl is a little different. A pearl comes from an oyster—well, it can come from clams too, but mainly oysters. There is nothing much uglier than an oyster. When you go looking for shells on the beach, you probably do not take an oyster shell and put it on the shelf. It is a pretty ugly shell. And if you choose to eat one, when you open it up, it is rather gruesome looking as well.
That is the natural man. In God’s eyes, he is ugly. I do not know how else to say it.
But what happens with a pearl? There is an organ called the mantle that secretes a fluid called nacre. This mantle is in the oyster next to the shell, and it secretes this material that makes the shell larger and larger.
When a piece of sand or grit gets between the mantle and the shell, it is irritating. It is like having a thorn in your finger. It continually irritates you, and you cannot get it out.
The oyster’s solution is to secrete some nacre around that little piece of sand. It forms a layer around it. Of course, it is still irritating because it is there, so the oyster secretes some more.
After about ten years, you can get a pearl of some value—ten years of irritation.
I say this because I have often spoken of the deep wounding. I think the diamond more reflects that great pressure, tremendous trial, and discipline of the Lord. But there are other things in everyday life that get you, are there not? Little things that irritate you. They can come from work, from your wife, from your children, or from yourself.
There are little things that irritate you, and suddenly you are losing your cool because you have been irritable half the day. But finally, you come to the realization: “That is not the Lord. I am not supposed to be an irritable person all the time. I need Your life, Lord. Even for this little irritation, I need Your life.”
The irritation may not go away, but now you have the life of the Lord operating in that situation, whatever it may be. It may go away, or it may not.
But it is those little irritations that create those little layers of the life of the Lord. Eventually, a pearl is formed out of life’s little irritations—but only if we really look to the life of the Lord in those things.
So, brothers and sisters, Hebrews encourages us not to think lightly of the discipline of the Lord, nor to faint.
To think lightly is to let these irritations go on without turning to the Lord. To think lightly is to be in all these difficulties and trials but not turn to the Lord. We do not have that altar, like Jacob should have had but did not.
We struggle through things with our natural man and all the natural defenses we have built up in our lives to deal with difficult situations. We all have them.
Difficult things used to happen in my family, and I was gone. I do not mean permanently. But we all handle these things differently. It does not matter how you do it: if it is in the natural, it is the natural man trying to deal with these things.
The bottom line is what our brother Stephen has been trying to teach us for a while now concerning spiritual exercise: we need to learn to live by the Spirit. We need to know the Spirit. We need communion. We need to listen to that inner unction within our hearts.
We need to say, “Lord, I cannot do this. Lord, I am leaning on You and not on my own understanding. Lord, this is a trial that breaks my heart, and my heart will be forever broken. But Lord, You can heal my heart.”
The scars on our Lord Jesus Christ are going to be beautiful to us. They came from much tribulation and much trial. We too have those scars, if we have lived long as Christians. But those scars will be beautiful.
I am so grateful that we have the God of Jacob. Jacob only made it through, brothers and sisters, because God was with him. Even in all those days of trial, he really was not seeking God the way he should have been, but God kept him.
God did finally break Jacob. He did finally break Jacob.
In the end, I think it is such a beautiful picture. We do not see Jacob confidently blessing his children. He is leaning on that staff because he has been wounded. His natural strength is no longer in control and prevailing, but he is leaning on that staff.
In Psalm 23:4, it says:
Thy rod and thy staff,
They comfort me.
The rod is discipline. The staff is the provision of the Lord.
Well, Lord, we come to Thee this afternoon. We know that You are after gold, precious stones, and pearls. Lord, we are lumps of coal and ugly oysters, but what a faithful God You are. What an amazing thing You did in Jacob’s life. But Lord, more amazing still, You are going to do it in our lives.
Lord, I pray that You will encourage us all, that we not think lightly of the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when it comes. Lord, may we have that altar in our lives that keeps communion fresh and the Spirit fresh and alive in us.
Lord, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.