We are so thankful for the Lord’s gathering us together again, and I am so thankful to see and be among all of you.
If you could please turn to our theme verse, 1 Corinthians 1:30.
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification.
Then, if we could turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 8. We are going to begin in John 8:13-14.
The Pharisees therefore said unto Him, Thou bearest witness of Thyself; Thy witness is not true.
Jesus answered and said unto them, Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true; for I know whence I came, and whither I go.
Then, if we turn to Philippians, chapter 1, verse 6.
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
And if we could turn backwards one book to Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 10.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
And then finally, if we could turn to Hebrews, chapter 7, verse 25.
Hence also He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
Let us bow for a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we are so thankful to You this afternoon that we can gather together in Your presence. Lord, we thank You that we know that You are here in our midst. Lord, You have been preparing and You have been working, and Lord, we trust that this time will be Yours.
So, Lord, we pray that You would guard Your word. Lord, please make it alive to us. Make it, Lord, so we can understand what You are saying.
Lord, if there are things in our hearts that have been, or continue to be, against You or in our way of coming into Your presence, Lord, by Your grace and mercy might You remove those things at this time.
Lord, for the speaking and for the listening, we all come before You, Lord, and we ask for Your power to be manifested. Thank You, Lord. We worship You in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, brothers and sisters, the theme for this year was a question: Who am I in Christ?
Now, if we take the first three words of our theme, “Who am I?” it is actually a question that not just believers ask. It is a question that the entire world right now is asking.
One of the amazing things about the human body is that the more we discover, the more we realize we do not know. Scientists have been asking this question, “Who are we? What is man?” for so long.
Recently—or not so recently—the great discovery was the human genome. This was an incredible discovery, where the DNA, or as our brother Francis Collins calls it, “the language of God,” was unraveled. For the first time, scientists had access to the entire human genome, and we could look at it and investigate it.
What we know about DNA is that when you unravel the DNA, a mirror image is created. From that mirror image, proteins can be produced, and these proteins function to keep the human body alive.
For so long, when we looked at the DNA, we thought, “Why is it that there are parts that make proteins, and then there are other parts that do not make proteins?” Scientists thought, “Could it possibly be that the DNA just had this dark matter, where nothing was being generated, and that there were parts that made proteins and parts that were just useless?”
They would stretch it out—the mirror image, that is—and they tried to figure out, “Well, what is it doing?” Then recently, some scientists thought they had made a huge discovery. That was when they stopped stretching it out and just let it go.
It formed a three-dimensional structure. It is sort of like, for those of you who used to use telephones, if you talked on the phone for a long enough period of time, the cord from the telephone to the handset became all tangled up. You would have to try to untangle it to use it, and you would pull it out and then let go of it, and it would form this three-dimensional thing. Quite bothersome, actually.
They could not figure out what it was doing. Every time, it was the same, because the mirror image had charge. There was positive charge and negative charge, and when you let go of it, all the charges would combine. The positive would go to the negative, and it formed this three-dimensional structure every time.
Then what they began to discover was that the three-dimensional structure functioned to cover and release, based upon the need of the body to make that protein. It was an amazing discovery.
The scientists who made this discovery had to have thought, as they started to see how complicated the language of God was, “Who are we? I mean, this is miraculous.” They began to suggest that time must be much, much longer than we thought, because for this to evolve would be impossible.
Brothers and sisters, the more we learn about the human body, or the physical body, the more we realize that we really do not know the answer to our theme question: Who am I?
The psalmist said that he would look into the sky and the moon and the stars, and he pondered, “What is man?” Brothers and sisters, for those of us who have come here to this conference, we believe that the Lord has put this question into our midst at this time with a very specific intention: that we might together ponder this question, “Who am I?”
Moses must have thought the same. We remember when Moses was overseeing the lands of Egypt. He was dressed like an Egyptian, and he had the pedigree of an Egyptian, but he saw so many people of Israel being enslaved and tortured. He must have thought, “Who am I?” as he looked over this land. “Am I with them, or am I with Egypt?”
We think of Joseph of Arimathea when the Lord was crucified and the excitement was gone. He must have pondered, as he saw and watched the Lord Jesus on the cross, “Am I a rich man of great reputation, or am I a follower of this dead man, Jesus? Who am I?”
We think of Matthew, Levi. He was the traitor. He was a Jew who betrayed his own people. He signed up when the Romans said, “Which one of you is willing to betray your own people? You speak the language, collect taxes for us, and we will turn a blind eye when you want to collect a little bit more for yourself.”
Levi raised his hand and said, “I will do it.” But then one day, poor Levi heard the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus inspired something in his heart. He was a person with no home, because he could not go back to the Jews. If he abandoned his post at the tax-collecting booth, he would have no place with the Romans either.
He was pondering this question: “Who am I?” Then one day the Lord Jesus came to his tax-collecting booth. His eyes looked up, and he saw the Lord, and the Lord said, “Follow Me.” And he did.
Brothers and sisters, the Lord has put this question into our midst at this time: Who am I? It is a very real question. It is a real question for real people who live real life.
The Lord’s intention, I think, this weekend is that He wants us to wrestle with it: “Who are we?” Because all around us, the enemy is trying to define that person for us, but the Lord is trying to capture us back.
The brothers, when they sent out the instructions to the speakers, mentioned that they wanted us to pay particular attention to the personal question. Not that they were undervaluing the corporate question, but for this year, the Lord, for some reason in His wisdom, is posing a personal question to us: “Who are you?” Or, “Who am I?”
It is, in fact, a very personal question. It cannot be answered simply because my parents said they were believers. Nor can it be answered by saying that my heritage is so, or that my culture is so. The Lord has a personal question for each of us.
The reason is that the Lord is building something very, very precious to Him. He is preparing a bride, and the bride is made up of living stones.
Each of us—you and I—when we were saved, a life settled into our hearts. This heart of stone, where we were dead and immovable, became a living stone. As living stones, we are being built together into a beautiful and prepared body of Christ—a bride made ready.
But at the end of it, when we think of the Lord’s work, His unit of building is still each believer. He is working in each of our hearts to make us ready to build up His beautiful bride, whom He loves so much.
That is why this question is important. It is important because He is still longing for each one of us individually. The corporate is built upon the personal.
So this weekend, the Lord is asking us, “Who are you? Who am I?” Because the personal question is very important.
Now, brothers and sisters, the question can also be a dangerous question. If we drift away for just a moment from the corporate view of what He is doing—the magnifying of Christ and the fulfilling of His heart—then we can become self-absorbed in the question.
It becomes a temptation, and the question itself can serve as a barrier between us and our Lord. The enemy can take the question and make it into a weapon against the Lord Jesus. He can make it such that the question causes us to think of ourselves, or focus on our own self and self-absorption.
So, brothers and sisters, before we even begin, we need to have some sense in our hearts that we need to be cautious, that we need to be dependent on the Lord for this time.
This very thing happened to our Lord Jesus. The Pharisees one day heard Him speaking, and they confronted Him. They said to Him, “Your testimony is not true,” because the Lord was telling them who He was.
The Lord Jesus’ answer to them was, “My testimony is true. I know where I came from, and I know where I am going.”
Brothers and sisters, in these two things that the Lord mentioned to them, I think there is a hint for us in being able to answer our question: “Who am I in Christ?” Where have I come from, and where am I going?
There are so many of us in this room, and the Lord raised us all differently. We all came from different backgrounds and different cultures. We all have many sins and many stumblings, and I am sure we could share stories about that and find quite a bit of common ground.
But we all came to the same story. That was where we came from: we came to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In some way, by His grace and mercy, He found us when we were lost in our sins and where we had stumbled. He came to us, and when, by some mercy, our eyes were opened and we saw Him, He spoke to our hearts. We found in Him a Savior. We found Someone who knew us; He knew everything about us.
When we believed in Him, what happened was that He took us and He buried us into His heart on that wonderful and terrible day upon the cross, when He was crucified for our sakes and He became our Passover Lamb.
There is a song that I really love, and the hymn writer wrote, “His open bosom became my ward.” That is to say, He opened up His heart.
All of us who have been saved have the same story. We hid ourselves in His heart, and He closed us up and covered us.
Brothers and sisters, we think of the horrible tragedy in Las Vegas this past week. We read stories about people who, when they fell to the ground, had loved ones or whomever jump on top of them and cover them to shield them.
In very much the same way, when the Lord Jesus was crucified, we hid ourselves in His heart. When the Bible tells us that His Father crushed Him, and all the punishment of sin came upon Him toward death, it came upon Him. But we are so thankful for the word in Corinthians: we were not crushed.
We hid ourselves in Him, and the punishment came down upon Him. When He died, we died in Him. When He was raised, we were raised in Him.
So, brothers and sisters, a wonderful thing happened to us: we all had a day of life, and we all share that same day of life. That is my testimony, and that is your testimony. It has bound us together in this wonderful house of God.
These days, very much the enemy is doing a tearing-down work to tear the house of God apart. He is tearing the world apart in order to tear down the house of God. The world already belongs to him; it matters not. He is using the world to tear down the house of God.
But we share the same beginning, those of us who have been saved. It is a story of a life, a resurrection life that cannot die. What the Lord did for us at the beginning cannot be undone.
The Lord said, “I know where I came from.” So we too need to know where we came from. What was done for us cannot be undone. If we dig deep enough into our lives, we will find an immovable rock of foundation.
That is to say, Christ is my wisdom and my righteousness. He is my sanctification, and He is my redemption. These things, brothers and sisters, cannot be undone. This is the beginning. This is the beginning of our life. It is a finished work.
But we have to wonder, brothers and sisters, why does it not feel real to us sometimes? Why, as we go through our days, like our brothers shared yesterday, does it not feel alive to us? We go through our life, and I do not see that it is exhibited in an experiential way. Who I am seems not to be so clear.
The Lord said we not only need to know where we came from, but we should know where we are going. If we can know where we are going, and if we know where we came from, then we have some sense of what our testimony is.
So, brothers and sisters, how do we know where we are going? No one can answer this question. Everyone has tried.
There was a movie I watched once with Robert De Niro. I do not remember any of the movie—I watched it on an airplane—but he was talking to his kids. I think he had six kids, and they were around a picnic table. As they would be talking, he would look at them and see them as though they were five years old, because he remembered their whole life.
When he saw them as adults, he could only remember their past. What it tells us is that for all of us, when we look at each other or when we look at ourselves, all we can see is who we are now and where we came from. Because of time and the limitation of flesh, we only know those two things: where I came from and who I am.
There is really only one Person who can see the end. He is the only One who sees the end like it is twenty-twenty vision. He is the only One who has the answer to our theme question, and He is the only One to whom we should go.
The word that the Lord put in my mind—and I am sorry, it is kind of a five-dollar word, and I do not intend it to be—is that He sees us longitudinally. What it suggests is that He sees our life, the span of it.
When He sees you and me, He sees the span of what we are to be. He sees the past, He sees the present, and He sees the future.
We remember when Peter failed so miserably at the end of his life. The Lord met him, and the Lord was telling him to tend His sheep. At the end, the Lord said to him:
When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest;
but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands,
and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.
He was telling Peter, “I know by what kind of death you are going to glorify Me.” When He looked at Peter at that moment, He saw Peter not in the moment, not defined by what he had done. He saw Peter in the full span of what he was going to do in his life.
It was the same when the Lord told Ananias, “Go find Saul on Straight Street.” Ananias had to tell the Lord, “Lord, I know this man. I know what he has done, and I know what he was going to do.”
The Lord told Ananias that he was going to be an instrument for His service, and that He was going to show him how much he was going to suffer for His name. The Lord was telling Ananias, “I see this man. I know what he has done. I know his condition now, but I also see him in the full span of who he is going to become for the sake of My kingdom and for My name.”
Brothers and sisters, when the Lord looks at you and me, and He has posed this question to us, “Who are you, and who am I in Christ?” the Lord is asking us because He already knows the answer. He already sees in us the longitudinal. He sees what He is doing and how He will do it.
When the Lord sees our life, He does not just look at us observationally, as though random chance is going to lead us through the rest of our life to where we end up and He sees all of that. That is not true.
Brothers and sisters, He not only knows us, but He is going to take an active role in making us who He will have us to be. The question, “Who am I?” has an answer in Him, and He will intervene toward that end.
All of our hope—all of it, brothers and sisters—is in Him. He is the answer. We are in Him now. We are hidden in Him. We died and were raised with Him, and everything that we are going to become is all because of Him.
He sees the past, He sees the now, and He sees where we are going. The Bible told us that we are His workmanship. That is to say, He is a craftsman. He sees each individual person. He sees where we have come from and what has happened to us, and His hand is in the entire design of what He is doing.
He will not stop until we are perfected. Our brother shared with us that He is the Author and the Finisher, and He is. He is the beginning of my life, and He is the end of my life.
By the Lord’s grace, we would like to look at this question, “Who am I in Christ?” knowing that we know where we came from, but praying, “Lord, might You show us where we are going?”
In order to do this, the Lord put on my heart to share the story of Jacob. Why Jacob? Because, brothers and sisters, Jacob is every man. Jacob is just like you and me.
His name means “grabber.” For those of you who have listened to Lance, Lance tells the story much better, and I wish our brother were still here. But the Lord has us go on.
Jacob is the grabber. I realized this morning, when our brother was telling us that the enemy is the grasper—as he said, he grasped at something that he wanted—I realized that in every one of us, the grasper has begotten the grabber. Because we want something, and we are always trying to become something.
When Jacob was born, he was number two, but he wanted to be number one. When they were older, he wanted to have the firstborn’s birthright.
The Bible tells us that love should cover a multitude of sins, but instead, Jacob identified his brother’s weaknesses and took advantage of them. He exploited his brother’s failings in order to gain the birthright.
Then he wanted the firstborn’s blessing. Through lying and cheating and stealing—and with a little help from his mom, of all places—he stole the blessing.
As he stood there wearing his brother’s best clothes, and his mom took the skin of the sheep and put it on his arms so that he would be hairy like his brother, and put the skin of the kid on his neck—if he looked at himself in the mirror, Jacob would be the last person who would know the answer to, “Who am I in Christ?”
He looked at himself, and he was half lamb, half Esau—or I guess a third Esau and a third Jacob. He did not know who he was, because he was always wanting to grab at something he was not.
So, brothers and sisters, if we ask a man like Jacob, “Who are you?” we might as well ask ourselves. Because who are we? We put on all these clothes that are not our own. We try to be someone whom we are not.
Thank the Lord that when He looked at Jacob, He saw Jacob’s life longitudinally. Thank the Lord that when He sees us, He looks at our life longitudinally.
Very reasonably, brothers and sisters, Esau got fed up with him, and Esau determined, “I am going to kill him.” So Jacob ran.
He ran, and he stopped at a place called Bethel. While he was sleeping that night, the Lord had an experience with him. The Lord told him that his descendants would be like the sands of the shore, that they would be a blessing to all the nations, and that they would live in the land that He was promising him.
Jacob woke up, and it was like a mountaintop experience. He had a high spiritual experience, and he set up a pillar. It was a moving point for him.
The Lord had shown him something longitudinal, but soon after that Jacob returned to earth. The mountaintop experience did not last, and he ran to where his uncle Laban lived.
He fell in love with a girl, Laban’s youngest daughter, Rachel. He worked seven years for her very faithfully. He tried to put in an honest day’s wages, because for the trickster not to try to steal her, really, was a move forward.
He worked seven years, and he thought, “You know, I have really turned a corner.” In the morning after his wedding, he opened his eyes, and it was Leah.
I do not know how Laban pulled this off, but you realize that tricksterism ran in the family. What comes around goes around.
Jacob really went through a changing period. His wages were changed ten times, and then he engaged in a battle of trickery with his uncle. Finally, after twenty years, he ran again.
Laban ended up catching up with him. Jacob had brought his wives, his wives’ maidservants, and all of his children. Laban caught up with him, they made their peace, and then Laban left.
Jacob then found himself in a very important place, alone. He had come to a river called Jabbok. At the river there was a shallow area where you could walk across the fords of Jabbok, and he stopped there. He heard that his brother was on the other side.
He knew that right then he was without a home. Behind him, he had tricked his way out of his uncle’s land; in front of him was his brother, whom he had tricked. He did not know whether his father was still alive. His father had already not been doing well before he left.
Here he was alone, so he separated out his family. He thought, maybe if some of his family were caught, perhaps the others could escape.
He found himself at Jabbok alone, and I think the question had to be in his heart: “Who am I?” He was homeless. He had no future. He had no friends. His family was at risk.
If we had asked him, “Who are you?” at that time, he very well could have answered, “I am someone who has argued over my wages. I have tried to get my just due. I have tried to move forward at the expense of others, and I have done a good job of doing that.”
If we describe that to us, brothers and sisters, so many of our lives are this way. We always want to move ahead and find the shortest distance between here and there, and we really do not know who we are.
By the Lord’s great mercy, He cleared everything out. He created a time at the fords of Jabbok where He could have a chance to intervene. Brothers and sisters, He did. This is a wonderful thing.
When you and I are caught in a situation like this, brothers and sisters, the blessing and the birthright are far from our minds. The memory of Bethel, where Jacob had the promise of the land and his descendants, becomes like a distant memory.
One thing that is true is that it is hard for the Lord to help us see who we are from mountaintop experiences. The Lord was going to meet Jacob, sort of on the ground floor, and speak to him.
This is such a wonderful example to us of how the Lord will show each one of us who we are, what He is doing, and some of His ways.
The first thing that happened that night, when Jacob was alone, was that the Lord initiated. He came to him and grabbed him. The grabber had been grabbed.
The Lord grabbed him, and the truth be told, the Lord had been grabbing him—or holding him—for a very, very long time. Jacob just could not see it with his eyes.
For decades, the Lord had been holding him and not letting him go, and Jacob just did not know it. Now, all of a sudden, his eyes were opened to see this Man grabbing him.
Clearly it was initiated by the Lord, because Jacob could not see Him to grab hold of Him first. The Lord grabbed him, saw him, and began to intervene.
He grabbed him because—and He grabs us, brothers and sisters, because—we are precious to Him.
I wondered, what is it about grabbing and holding something? I thought of my wife’s wedding dress. In my home—and here we have to express a little bit of caution, because we do not want to go too much into self-absorption—I have my wife’s wedding dress. I have it.
She is always wanting to donate it, and I never want to donate it. So now what I have done is hidden it in the attic. Why do I keep grabbing hold of it and not letting it go? It is because it is precious to me.
We wonder, why is it that the Lord keeps grabbing hold of us? Brothers and sisters, I just leave it at that. I think it is a very simple answer, and I think we all know the answer. But we do not want to pursue that too much, because there is something actually much, much more.
It is built upon a love for us; there is no doubt. But, brothers and sisters, there is something much, much more.
Jacob did not realize, “My whole life, He has been grabbing me. I have been dragging Him to every dark corner of my life, and He never let go.”
We think of the song that our brother George Matheson wrote, “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.” Through all the difficulties of my life, He never let me go. We would drag Him everywhere.
I have to apologize again, brothers and sisters, for my science-fiction nerdness. If any of you have seen Return of the Jedi, there is this large Imperial walker fighting against the Ewoks. The Ewoks try to set up a rope so it will trip, but the Imperial walker keeps walking. The Ewoks just get dragged and dragged, and they cannot stop it. They are just getting dragged away.
I thought, “What an undignified example. I cannot use that.” The image is just wrong. But then, brothers and sisters, I remembered what our brother said this morning: that He was obedient to the point of death, and even death on the cross.
If we think that the Lord is too high and great to be dragged around like an Ewok, holding on for dear life to us, brothers and sisters, we do not know how far He was willing to go to come to the cross.
You see, brothers and sisters, He will go everywhere for us. He promised us, “I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.”
When we see this, we realize that the grabbing has been forever. It was only when Jacob was all alone that night, when all the distractions were gone and all his life’s ambitions suddenly could not be seen, that he realized, “Someone is grabbing me.”
Along the way, what we realize is that He has been doing that to you and me. How long, brothers and sisters, has He been grabbing you? How long has He been holding you or me and not letting go?
What we see is that He is faithful to this. Not only is He holding on to us, but we think of Peter again, at the end of his life, when Peter was going to stumble. The Lord said something so wonderful to him that sometimes gets underappreciated: “I have prayed for you.”
Brothers and sisters, we read together in Hebrews chapter 7 that forever the Lord lives to intercede for us.
If we can grasp that for one moment—the Lord’s interceding for His people—what we realize is that He is not only able; He is willing. He is powerful. He sees the end from the beginning, and He will do it.
When we have a moment of difficulty, there are two things that we see: He is holding us, He is not letting us go, and He is praying for us. The Spirit prays for us with groanings, and He is always doing this.
I am so thankful because Jacob is every man. He stumbled and failed, and he is like you and me. But the Lord never let him go, and He has never let us go, regardless of our paying any attention whatsoever to Him.
Somewhere along that night, something happened. Jacob turned.
All of a sudden, Jacob saw Him. Jacob looked into His face, which was by itself a miracle. When he saw Him, something changed.
This message was actually brought on by watching the Little League World Series. I was watching Venezuela play against the Dominican Republic—actually, it was just the highlights.
It was, I think, the bottom of the seventh, because they only play seven innings. The Dominican Republic had blue uniforms, and they were leading by a run. But there were two men on, and Venezuela was wearing green uniforms.
The pitcher, who was probably thirteen years old, threw a curveball that did not break as much as he wanted it to. The boy at the plate hit a line drive into the gap between right field and center field, and two runs scored.
The Venezuelan third-base coach was hugging the boys as they crossed the plate, and Venezuela won by a run.
The Venezuelan dugout was on the first baseline, and so the coaches ran out onto the field. As the head coach and the assistant coach were heading toward third base, where there was this big melee and they were jumping up and down, the Dominican Republic’s pitcher, thirteen years old, who gave up the winning run, fell off the mound with his face in the grass. He was weeping and sobbing.
The Venezuelan coach was running, saw the boy, and ran over to him. He was in a green uniform, and he hugged the boy in the blue uniform.
When he grabbed him, the boy tried to push him away. He wanted none of it. He was pushing him away and pushing him away.
Later, you read the interview, and what the Venezuelan coach was telling him was, “You played great. You should be proud of yourself. We are all ballplayers. We all love this game.”
He was hugging him, and the boy was pushing him away. Then, as you watched the video, what ended up happening was that the boy changed. All of a sudden, the boy hugged him and would not let him go.
It was a very moving moment because you saw that something shifted in the boy from resistance and rebellion to almost—he needed it. He needed it.
The boy was holding the Venezuelan coach, and I watched this happening on my computer. What I realized was, “This is just like the story of Jacob.”
We are in rebellion, and we are not holding on to Him. He holds on for so long that finally we turn around, we see Him, and we realize, “This is where I am supposed to be.”
Jacob finally realized this, and he held Him. He would not let go. He really would not let go. He clung to Him; that is the right word.
Brothers and sisters, at some point—maybe we are not there yet, but at some point—the Lord is waiting for us to give in, to finally stop fighting and stop pushing Him away, and just realize, “This is where I was supposed to be.”
It is a place of incredible love from our Lord. It is also a place of a beginning, where we begin to see that there is a wisdom, a righteousness, a sanctification, and a redemption in Him. These things begin to become real to us when we give in and accept Him.
Jacob was there holding Him. It is so important to us, because it is our protection.
It is very much like Hezekiah. His father Ahaz was such a crook and did so many terrible things, and we wonder, “How did Hezekiah make it through to be who he became?” The Bible tells us: because he clung to the Lord.
What this is telling us is that he clung not to a heritage, or a teaching, or something cultural. He clung to the Person.
So, brothers and sisters, here we see the saving grace for all of us: when we cling to a Man, a Person, and we stay near to Him.
The phenomenal thing about clinging is that it has nothing to do, really, with growing or moving on or maturing. All it has to do with is not sliding back. All it is, is to say, “If I do not hold on to You, I am going to drown.”
The other person who knows how to cling is my son. When I first tried to teach him how to swim, I brought him into the swimming pool. He was so scared.
He would grab me, and I would push him off me. One arm went on me, and I would grab the arm and release it. Then his legs were wrapped around me, so I would pull his legs off, and his arms were on me again.
He had determined in his heart, “I am not going to let go.”
Brothers and sisters, this should be our norm. This should be a normal heart attitude for all of us who are believers. It should be the baseline for us, that we have a determination: “I am not going to be separated from Him,” because there is danger when that happens.
This was a precious thing when Jacob turned and began to cling to Him.
Then the morning was coming. You know, the mountaintop experience has to end at some point. The Lord said, “You have to release Me.” Jacob said, “I am not going to release You until You bless me.”
Before that had happened, the Lord had touched Jacob’s hip socket and dislocated it. Brothers and sisters, it may be that Jacob did not know, but he was going to receive two blessings.
He asked, “You have to bless me.” Jacob was going to receive two blessings. They may not have been the blessings he was hoping for.
Jacob was an explorer. He loved to walk. He loved to go here and there, find his next adventure, and see whom he was going to conquer next. It is cumbersome to walk with a limp when you are used to running.
What had happened was that the Lord had dislocated his hip, and this speaks to what our brother was sharing with us last night: the Lord introduced the cross into his life.
We may wonder, “Why is it that I have this limp or this cross? Why is it that I cannot fly the way I think I should in serving the Lord, or exercising my gifts, or whatever it may be?”
What we see here is that it was blessing number one. He would never be able to walk without a reminder of his limp.
Every time he limped, when he came down off the mountaintop and began to walk in normal life, he would remember what happened there. It would be something real in his heart, not merely a lingering memory.
Wherever he walked, even though he could not run as he thought he should, the Lord’s cross upon his life would be a reminder to him of the One who still had not let him go.
The mountaintop experience had been translated into the chores and cumbersome nature of daily life. Blessing number one was, “I will dislocate your hip.”
It does not sound so palatable, brothers and sisters, but it really is. Christ is my wisdom.
The world’s wisdom would not say this is the way to go, but His life in my life has caused me not to be able to run away and enjoy all the pleasures of sin. There is something that is holding me back from what the world says I could be, but holding me up for all the things that the Lord is intending for me to be—who I am in Christ.
The hip slowed down his flesh.
Brothers and sisters, I think sometimes we wish that we did not have the difficulties of our life. But the truth of the matter is, if you think for a moment how many times the difficulties of our life—the cross in our life—caused us to come back to Him, then we realize, if we look at it with heavenly currency, how valuable these moments are.
It is not to say that any of it is easy, but it was a way for the Lord to take what was a mountaintop experience and make it into our normal life.
“Who am I in Christ?” should be defined by my daily life. I should find Him in my daily life, not just in these peaks and moments.
This was the Lord’s intention with the blessing. “I will not let You go, Lord, until You give me a blessing.” “I will bless you: the hip.”
Then the second blessing came in a question. The question that was asked was our theme question. The Lord asked, “What is your name?” Really, what He was saying was, “Who are you?”
Jacob answered his name very honestly and very accurately. He did not say, “I am the son of Abraham, who was faithful,” nor, “I am the grandson of Abraham,” nor, “I am the son of Isaac.” He said, “I am Jacob.”
The grabber, the supplanter, or the usurper—whichever definition we choose to use. He was telling the Lord, “I am this. I have stolen my way to where I am, and this is who I am.”
Brothers and sisters, the question that the Lord asked, as we mentioned earlier, is a very personal question. The reason it is so personal is that the unit of His building is each individual believer, but the final product is that we would be built together into the perfect bride.
So it is a personal question: “What is your name?” Or, “Who are you? Who am I?”
We remember when the Lord was on the earth, and the crowds were crowding in on Him. He was like a rock star, and all the crowds were crowding in. The disciples were trying to keep everyone away from Him.
There was a woman who was sick. She had had a hemorrhage for so long. She saw the Lord and thought, “If I can go up there and touch the hem of His garment, I believe I am going to be saved.”
She crept along between all the people and finally came up to the Lord. She thought, “I am going to touch His garment, be healed, and then I am just going to make my quick escape and no one will notice, because there are so many people.”
She got to where the Lord was, reached down, grabbed His garment, and was immediately healed.
All of a sudden, as the crowd was pressing in on Him and the disciples were trying to push them away, the Lord spun around and said, “Who touched Me?”
The disciples looked at Him and said, “There are so many people here, and we are trying to push them away, and You turn around and say, ‘Who touched Me?’”
The woman knew that she had been found. She looked at Him, and He looked at her. Even though there were hundreds of eyes watching them, probably, in that moment it was as if only two eyes were looking at each other and everyone else blurred out.
The Lord had a conversation with her, even in the midst of all the other things that were going on. The reason, brothers and sisters, is that He pays attention to our life. He knows you and me personally. He is walking with us, and He is building us up for a wonderful purpose.
He knows it. He is planning it. If we can live along that line, He will give us a new name.
For the overcomers, or as He told the church in Pergamum, He said, “I am going to give you the hidden manna, a food that no one can see. Then I am going to give you a name that no one knows except the one who receives it.”
So He asked Jacob, “What is your name?” Jacob said, “I am Jacob. That is who I am.”
The Lord said to him—because the Lord has a longitudinal view—“Your name is Israel.”
“You said that you were the grabber, the usurper, and you have been. But in My mind’s eye, in the place where I have seen you, you are the prince.”
What is a prince, brothers and sisters? It means that we are a son in the royal court.
You and I are grabbers. We are trying to hold on to all these things in our life. We look at ourselves in the context of human eyes and Satan’s definition, and we see ourselves in the moment, or we see what we have done.
All the wonderful things the Lord has done, the enemy masks. Then he asks us to chase down people who can tell us who they think we are. “People can read my palm and tell me who I am.”
Brothers and sisters, what we are not seeing is that the Lord is the only One who saw Jacob longitudinally. He saw the entirety of Jacob’s life all at once in this one who was before Him, holding on and not letting go.
He said, “You are a royal son, a royal daughter.” We look at ourselves and say, “We are just grabbers.” But the Lord says, “You are sons in the royal family, and your Father is in heaven.”
This is an amazing moment, where Jacob saw that the Lord saw him differently.
Jacob must have wondered what to say. So he had a question in response.
Later on, he called the place Peniel, which means “the face of God.” So he was looking at Him. Jacob asked Him very reasonably, “What is Your name?” Essentially, “Who are You?”
I think, brothers and sisters, this was the second blessing. The Lord had put into Jacob’s heart a question.
The Lord could have answered. I think He could have answered, but the Lord chose instead to say something else: “Why do you ask?” Then, in the blink of an eye, He was gone.
It was a cliffhanger. The Lord gave Jacob this wonderful, incredible mountaintop experience, and then at the very end, the Lord planted this question in Jacob’s heart: “Who are You?”
The reason I think it was a blessing, brothers and sisters, for all of us, is that this question—“Who are You, Lord?”—is a question that we can take and chase after for the rest of our lives.
We can chase it down and find out who He is, and find out more and more about Him. It is a life-defining question. It is a purpose-defining question.
From this point to my last day, whether it is because the Lord comes to find us or because I go to see Him, if this question is the defining, driving force of my life—“Who are You, Lord?”—then, brothers and sisters, I think we are going to be okay.
If we can chase down that question, I think very reasonably we can believe that the answer to this question will give us the answer to our theme question: “Who am I in Christ?”
“Who am I, Lord?” will be defined by the answer to the question, “Who are You, Lord?”
The world is telling us to find our answer in so many different places. But the Lord’s blessing to Jacob was that He did not answer the question immediately. He gave him this thought that would drive him and change the direction of his life: “Who are You, Lord?”
Can we see why it was such a blessing?
For you and me, as we ponder this question, “Who am I in Christ?” the answer, the Lord told us, is where you came from and where you are going.
We do not know where we are going, perhaps. But what we do know is that if we chase down the answer to the second question, “Who are You, Lord?” and spend our life finding the answer to that, then I think, brothers and sisters, we will find the answer to our question.
This is what our hope has to be: somehow He knows us in this longitudinal way. He sees us that way.
There is a verse that I always kind of did not understand until this conference. It came to my mind: 1 Corinthians 13. If you could turn to it with me, brothers and sisters.
This is a very, very famous chapter. It is a chapter about love.
In the midst of all the description of the incredible nature of the love of God, in verse 12 there is a very particular verse. In the New American Standard, it reads this way:
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face;
now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
I read the verse again as I was thinking about this thing of the Lord grabbing me, and “Who am I?” and “Who are You?” The verse tells us that Someone has fully known me.
“I have been fully known.” It is already a past-tense thing: have been fully known.
When I look in a mirror—meaning, maybe I look at myself—I think the original translation was a looking glass. Many people say it is a looking glass. We look at ourselves in a mirror, and we ask, “Who am I?” We do not really see it; we see dimly.
But what it is saying is that we will know because Someone fully knows us.
As we discover the surrounding love that is in verses 1 through 11 and in verse 13, this love that surrounds the knowing, as we begin to discover His love for us, brothers and sisters, I think as we begin to know the answer to “Who are You, Lord?” we will know the answer to this question.
It would be easy if the Lord just came out and told us, but then it would be a mountaintop. We would come back down to earth and end up with Laban again.
What He is trying to do is this: He gave us two blessings. He gave us a limp and a question.
By His grace, the rest of Jacob’s life, Jacob had a limp and a question, and the Lord protected him.
The mountaintop ended, the Lord disappeared, and Jacob was left there again physically alone. But I think he knew at this point that he was not alone.
Then he gathered up his children, his wives, and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Among them were Perez, his grandson, and his great-grandson Hezron, from whom many generations later would be born our wonderful Lord Jesus.
He gathered them all together and crossed over the fords of Jabbok. They came to a resting place, Shechem, and then he built an altar.
His whole life, he had been referring to God as the God of Abraham or the Fear of Isaac. Then he built this altar, and he called it so wonderfully, “God, the God of Israel”—my God.
I think very much, brothers and sisters, it was the beginning of a journey for him.
May the Lord grant us the same blessing in our life, that as we ponder the theme question, “Who am I in Christ?” the Lord would bless us with a question and a limp, so that we might go on and find the fullness of who He is.
Not simply to know the loving Savior, but to make ourselves available as instruments for His purpose and His glory and the fulfilling of His heart’s desire.
Let us bow for a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we thank You for Your mercy and kindness, for never letting us go. Lord, we do pray that You might be able to find in us those who are willing to be held by You and to hold You, Lord, to engage with You.
Thank You, Lord, for Your faithfulness to us. Thank You for Your long-suffering.
Lord, we pray that in the end, You might receive to Yourself what You have been longing for for so long. Lord, help us not to be those who stand in Your way.
Lord, prepare our hearts and make us ready. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.