And when He saw that He prevailed not against him, He touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained, as he wrestled with Him.
And He said, Let Me go, for the day breaketh.
And he said, I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.
And He said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.
And He said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed.
And Jacob asked Him, and said, Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name. And He said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My name? And He blessed him there.
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for, said he, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.
And the sun rose upon him as he passed over Penuel, and he limped upon his thigh.
Therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day; because He touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip.
Oh, Father, we do thank Thee for these that are found here in Thy presence, and we thank Thee, Lord, that Thou hast made marvellous and sufficient provision for this evening. In Thy wonderful foreknowledge, Thou hast, Lord, put aside, as it were, especially all the grace and the power, the anointing, that we need for this time this evening. And, Lord, we are very thankful for that.
We come to Thee in our weakness, Lord, both in speaking and in hearing. Wilt Thou grant that a spirit of quietness may come upon us this evening? Wilt Thou grant, Lord, that every single weapon that the enemy would use to somehow or other alienate us from Thy speaking and Thy working may itself be frustrated?
Lord, we want to thank Thee for that glorious power Thou hast given us in the Person of the Holy Spirit. And by faith we stand into that now. Lord, grant that we may see Thee this night; we may receive from Thee this night. May every single one of us come face to face with Thee.
Lord, we ask this together humbly in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, we have been talking about the life of Jacob. We talked about the love of God and Jacob—the election of Jacob, God setting His love upon him. We talked about the purpose of God and Jacob. We have spent three times on this matter of the purpose of God and Jacob: that the purpose of God according to election might stand, it says in Romans 9 concerning Jacob.
We have seen that fivefold purpose of God for Jacob. I am not going to go over it again now. It is all recorded, and we are too far on into the time to go over it all. It takes too much time.
But what I want to say this evening is this: God’s purpose for Jacob was glorious and significant. But the problem is Jacob.
The purpose of God for Jacob was glorious and significant, just as the purpose of God for you and me, as His redeemed people, is glorious and significant. There is nothing small, mean, or petty about the purpose of God for you and for me. When God saved you and saved me, He saved us with a tremendous purpose in mind, with a tremendous destiny in view. There is nothing small or petty about it at all.
But our problem, as it was with Jacob, is not a matter of ignorance. Jacob was not ignorant of God’s purpose. He valued the birthright more than anybody else. He valued it far more than Esau. The Bible says Esau despised his birthright, but Jacob prized it so greatly that he did anything and everything to get it into his hands.
He prized the word of God to his father and mother—that the elder should serve the younger, and that there were nations in her womb bound up with these boys. He prized it so much that he could not keep his own hand off the purpose of God. He had to get hold of that birthright, but he could not wait for God to do it in God’s own time and way. He had to do it himself.
He prized that blessing, that firstborn blessing, so greatly that he fell in with his mother’s plan of deception to deceive his poor, blind, half-deaf old father, and somehow or other get the blessing that was meant for Esau.
The problem was not ignorance. When God appeared to Jacob, as we have already said this evening, the problem was not that he was ignorant. When Jacob saw the Lord standing above that staircase, with angels ascending and descending, he immediately said, “This is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”
That shows some spiritual insight. That shows some spiritual shrewdness. That shows spiritual discernment. I do not know how many people here, if they saw a ladder reaching up from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it, would understand. But I expect some would say, “Oh, how marvellous! A kind of spiritual elevator—a sort of moving staircase. How wonderful! How exciting! What is it all about?”
Jacob was not an ignorant man. He was a man with real insight—spiritual insight. He had spiritual knowledge in abundance. That was not the problem.
Nor was the problem zeal. Jacob had plenty of zeal. He gave himself to these things. He could not help it. As soon as God appeared to him, he struck a bargain.
“Oh, God,” he said, “did You say that You will be with me whithersoever I go, and bring me safely back to this place? Well, all right. If You will do this, and throw into it feeding me and clothing me, and blessing me always, and bring me back in peace to my father’s house, then You shall be my God. And I will make here a house for You. And of all that You give me, I will surely give a tenth to You.”
Jacob’s problem was neither ignorance nor apathy. Now, I must say that our problem, even in a company like this, is often ignorance and often apathy. Some of us have heard things for so many years that somehow or other we are not even aware that we have become apathetic.
Nothing moves us. Nothing challenges us. Nothing gets us on the go. We have heard it all. We know it all—like that dreadful hymn we used to sing, which actually is a marvellous hymn on the other side of the British Isles: “Come and rejoice with me.” But it ends with a dreadful verse: “And now I know it all.”
It at least sums up some Christians’ apathy towards the Lord. They know it all.
Ignorance was not Jacob’s problem. Zeal was not his problem. What was his problem? Circumstances? No. Relationships? No. He had some difficult circumstances, and he had some difficult relationships. What was the problem? The problem was Jacob himself.
Your problem and my problem is not essentially ignorance, nor is it a lack of zeal. It is always essentially yourself and myself. We are the problem.
In some way or another, left to ourselves, the more knowledge we have and the more zeal we have, the more we shall frustrate the purpose of God. We become the very means by which the house of God cannot be built; the very means by which we cannot possess what is ours in the Lord; the very means that stops us from increasing, being fruitful, and multiplying—becoming a people.
We ourselves stop ourselves from becoming a blessing to others, from being able to give the Lord to others. We trip ourselves up so that we are unable to come to the throne of God. We are the problem.
It was not that Jacob did not understand God’s purpose, or that he did not appreciate the things of God. He did understand the purpose of God, and he did appreciate the things of God. The problem was the strength of his own natural life, his own nature—his uncontrollable and powerful self-will.
Now, do not think that everyone who has an uncontrollable and powerful self-will is a six-foot-four type with broad shoulders and a chin like granite. Sometimes little sisters, this high and weighing only a few pounds, have uncontrollable self-will. They will master their husbands, master their children, master the church. They will master God, if it is left to them.
Do not think that someone has to have a chin like an anvil and somehow look like a tank, and then we say, “Ah, I can see straight away. That person has uncontrollable self-will.” No, no, no.
And these people who sit in the back row—pardon me saying this—always sort of, “Oh no, no, no, no. I am very humble. I am very modest.” Now, I am not saying you are sitting in the back row for that reason tonight, but you understand what I mean.
“Please, would you do this? Would you come forward?” “Oh, no, no, no, no, no.” They seem so humble. “Would you play the piano?” “No, no, no, I cannot play the piano. No, no, do not ask me. Do not ask me.” “Would you please lead the meeting?” “No, no, no, please, please, please. I want to just blend with the people.”
It is nonsense. These people often have tremendous self-will. They would control the whole company from the back row.
So, do not get away with this idea that it is always people in the front, people who are always in view, or the little ones, who essentially have this kind of uncontrollable self-will. We have all got it one way or another.
And the measure in which you and I have to come to our Jabbok, where God breaks us, is the measure of the strength of our natural life in one form or another. One person may have tremendous emotional strength, and therefore they will have to come to their brokenness on that point.
Another person may have tremendous strength in their reasoning power, their reasoning faculties. They are not emotional, but they are all brain; that has to be broken by the power of God. Other people have tremendous will—my word, they are so stubborn.
It does not always follow that a person with great self-will is someone with a big character. Some people who have the most stubborn, obstinate self-will are really quite little people. But like a donkey, you cannot get them to move. If they get something in their head, they will not move.
Now, it was the spontaneous strength of Jacob’s self-life—spontaneous strength. Did you hear that? The spontaneous strength of Jacob’s self-life spawned all the deceit, the scheming, all the supplanting of his life. He could not help it.
Whether it was his twin brother Esau over the birthright, whether it was his old father Isaac—half-blind, half-deaf—whom he deceived over the blessing, whether it was Uncle Laban—I mean, I do not know what he did with those sheep. To this day, I do not.
I have talked with shepherds galore in Israel about these speckled and spotted sheep, and whether peeling poplar and putting it where they are drinking and eating somehow or other produces them. They all tell me they do not know anything about it. I have talked to agronomists, as you call them on this side—we use more old-fashioned words on my side—but they do not seem to know anything about these peeled poplar sticks and so on.
But that does not matter. The fact is this: Jacob thought, by doing it, he was swindling his uncle. Whether it was God who gave the blessing, that is another point. Jacob thought, “My word, those things hold working!”
It was a spontaneous strength that spawned all these schemes, all these deceits, all this supplanting, all this manipulation, all this seeking, as it were, to come out on top. He could not help it.
It is so also with all of us. We are the greatest hindrance to the realization of God’s purpose, both in our own lives individually and in our life corporately.
You know, I said it this morning, and I say it again. I do not want to belabour it. I do not want to make it a heavy matter. But the fact remains that there are those I know all over the world who have got church truth in their heads until it is coming out of their ears. And they do not know it, but they have been a lifelong frustration of the house of God being built.
And wherever I go, they say, “Oh, brother, we are living in dreadful days, in a wicked and perverse generation, a generation with itching ears. They will not hear this matter of the church.” It is rubbish. There are thousands and thousands of young people, if nowhere else than in the great charismatic movement, who are longing to hear about the house of God—longing to get into this body of the Lord, longing to know what it is to function as the church of God.
But these people who have got it all up here are the people who stop the thing from ever coming into practice and realization, and they do not know it. They are Jacobs who have never come to their Jabbok.
Forever manipulating, forever arranging conversations, forever sliding little books and pamphlets into people’s way, forever somehow or other hitching things up on the phone, forever trying somehow to manipulate things. Oh, it looks like God, but it is not. It is all Jacob at work with the things of God—trying to get the birthright, trying to get the blessing, trying to get the prosperity and fullness. Working, working, working, working, working.
They have seen the house of God. They have seen something of the purpose of God. Well, of course, they never say it. They talk about the cross. That is the extraordinary thing. Many of them talk about the cross because it is a theme in their heads. They say, “We must die. We must die.”
And when you talk about the Holy Spirit, immediately they clam up—frightened to death. I should think so too, because only when the Holy Spirit comes can you know the cross. There is no way, no way to know Calvary apart from the Person and ministry of the Holy Spirit.
It is a theory which makes a person dark, heavy, and afflicted. You go around with that sad look and that kind of, “The way of the Lord—His sacrifice.” God is not the help of their countenance.
It is a theory which puts them into dark colours, puts a permanent downturn to the lip, and puts a droop in the eye and a stoop in the shoulder. “The way is so dark. But we must go this way of the cross.”
When the Holy Spirit comes, it is by the Spirit that we put to death the deeds of the body. There is no other way. It is afflicting the flesh. It becomes a soulish force. The very teaching of the cross and of holiness becomes a soulish matter, a psychic matter, by the very people who say there must be a difference between soul and spirit.
And so we impose upon ourselves a structure and a bondage which holds a company of people in its grip, so that they cannot see the realization of the purpose of God in their lifetime. And the key to the whole thing is this: Jacobs have not come to their Jabbok.
When a Jacob comes to his Jabbok, then God steps in, and the strength of that man, the strength of that woman, is touched at its heart. They are never the same again.
When Jacob later described this greatest experience of his life, the greatest crisis of his life, at the ford Jabbok, he did not call it, as he could have done, brokenness. He could have described that place and said, “I shall call this place Brokenness.”
He did not call it lameness. I tell you, in your English version, it does not really come over quite the way that it does in Hebrew, because when the Lord touched his thigh, He dislocated his hip. And for the rest of his life, Jacob walked with a dislocated hip. That is why he limped from that day to the end.
And the very last picture we have of Jacob in the New Testament is that he is leaning on the top of his staff. Now, a dislocated hip, for anybody who knows anything about that kind of thing, is a pretty painful business.
He did not call it lameness. “That is where God touched me. That is where God dislocated my hip. I will call it Lameness.” He did not even call it transformation. He could have said, “I know what I am going to call this place. This is the place where the Lord changed me. I am going to call it Transformation.”
Do you know what he called it? He called it the face of God.
In Hebrew, Peniel. And this word in Hebrew, panim, literally means “face,” but it also means “presence.” You remember when Moses said, “If Thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence,” and the Lord said, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”
In Hebrew, Moses said, “If Your face does not go with us, do not take us up.” And the Lord said, “My face shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest,” because in Hebrew presence, countenance, and face are the same. A person’s face is their presence. A person’s countenance is their presence.
And here is something so marvellous, so wonderful: this crisis that Jacob came to at the ford Jabbok was a confrontation with the presence of the Lord.
Now listen, I want to say just a little bit about this, because it seems to me that so very often you and I are fearful of any kind of experience that might be costly and painful. How wonderful that Jacob could call it the presence of the Lord.
There are many different levels of experiencing the presence of the Lord. Jacob met the Lord first at Bethel. You would have thought that would have been a revelation of the church. Was that not the face of God? Was that not the presence of the Lord? Was that not the outshining of God? Was that not the Lord at work? Did he not meet the Lord? Yes.
This was deeper. This was the end of Jacob. The first meeting with God and the first revelation of God left Jacob intact. He could still bargain. He was still the old Jacob, only he had got revelation.
Oh, how dangerous it is to have a Jacob with revelation. The church is filled with Jacobs with revelation. Well, I will not say filled, but there are quite a lot of us. We are Jacobs, but we have got revelation. We have got experience of the Lord, but we cannot help it: we get to work manipulating, we get to work getting it off the ground, we get to work trying somehow or other to do it one way or another.
Now, I would just like to say basically three things about this matter this evening. And I do trust the Lord that He will bring home this message more than any other to your heart.
First of all, the necessity of Jabbok. Now, you understand what I mean when I say the necessity of Jabbok. Jabbok was the stream that Jacob came to, where he had the experience.
Will you notice one little thing, please? It says in Genesis 32:24, “And Jacob was left alone.”
Jabbok is an absolute necessity in any life that will go on with God. Do you want to go on with the Lord? Do you want to follow the Lamb all the way? Do you really want God to do in you a work that will bring you to His throne? Do you really want to come to that city and be part of that bride, that wife of the Lamb? Then listen to me.
Why has God called His people Jacob and Israel? Because at the heart of the house of God, at the heart of the church of God, at the heart of the elect people of God, there must be a transformation from Jacob to Israel. I am not talking about conversion. I am talking about what follows conversion.
This man was a covenant child of God long before he came to his Jabbok. His problem was that he was converted, but his actual natural strength was not touched.
There are thousands upon thousands of Christians who are truly converted, truly born of God, but their natural strength, their natural resources, their natural energy—what they are in themselves—is totally untouched. And that is the problem.
Jabbok is a necessity in any life that is going to go on, have power with God, be a prince with God, come to the throne of God, and build the house of God. There is no alternative. Did you hear that? There is no alternative. Settle it in your heart now. There is no alternative to this kind of experience.
In principle, not in detail. In principle, every believer must have their Jabbok experience. And sooner or later, to everyone who goes on with the Lord, it will come.
There is no other way for Jacob to become Israel, for the schemer to become the prince with God.
God’s timing of a Jabbok is always perfect. I hope you hear every word I say this evening on this matter. I have a lot to say, and all of it is, in my estimation, very important. God’s timing of a Jabbok is absolutely perfect. It is never early, and it is never late.
He plans it with the minutest care: arranging circumstances, arranging family problems, arranging relationships, arranging difficult people that come into your life—all kinds of things. Every single thing is taken note of by the sovereignty of God. He arranges it all.
And there comes a time when Jacob is left alone—absolutely alone.
Jabbok comes to all who will go on with God. It was a ford. Now, I will just give you a little geography lesson for one moment. This Jabbok is a stream on the other side of the River Jordan, on the east side of the River Jordan, and this ford is the only place you can cross it for some miles.
So there is a sense in which Jacob had to come to this particular ford. Behind him was Uncle Laban in a fury. In front of him was twin brother Esau with, as far as Jacob knew, murderous, revengeful hate.
God knows just how to corner His saints. You think you are going to get away, do you? You wait. You just wait. One of these days, you, in your own life and in your own way, will have behind you an Uncle Laban in fury, and in front of you your twin brother Esau, whom you think has revengeful hate. You cannot go back. You cannot go on. You are cornered.
It is very interesting that just a little before this, dear Jacob, coming towards Jabbok, saw two companies of angels. He actually says it at the beginning of Genesis 32, in the first two verses, and he calls the place Mahanaim—still there to this day—which means “two companies,” two groups in Hebrew.
I would have thought that would have comforted him, especially after what I have said about angels. I sometimes wonder about these two companies—whether one was going out and the other coming down. I do not know. But anyway, there were two companies of angels. He saw two groups of angels.
But now he is left alone, and as far as we can tell, no groups of angels were around him at all. He was alone. He was trapped—not apparently by circumstances or people, but by God.
When God brings you to your Jabbok, it will seem to be circumstances, problems, insurmountable difficulties, relationships, situations; and very, very rarely will you detect that it is God.
You will think it is yourself—your own foolishness, your own stupidity, your own strength of will. At last you come to realize that you are your own worst enemy, and that what you reap, you sow in the end.
That is how God gets us to this place. It would be lovely to be able to say, “Oh, if only people could come to their Jabbok, wafted along on the wings of angels, drifting in, skating into it with the power of God.” Sort of this lovely sentimental idea: “Here I am, Lord, break me.”
I have heard people ask the Lord to break them, and I have really felt like an electric shock in my own heart. I thought, “Do they know what they are asking?” They think that some angel is going to come and take their sweet little hand and kiss it, and then nail it to the cross; then take the other hand and kiss it and nail it to the other cross. You know, a lovely ecstatic experience of being crucified with Christ.
It does not happen like that. Your dearest and nearest will do it for you. That is how it happens.
The boss. The employees. Your beloved brothers and sisters in the company. Your wife, your husband, your children, your parents. They are the ones that God uses to take those hands of yours, unwilling, resentful, rebellious, and force them to the cross and drive the nails through them.
You said, “Lord, I want to be broken. I want to be broken.” The Lord said, “My, very well.” And then He arranges circumstances, relationships, and things start to go wrong. Home life becomes difficult. Business life becomes difficult.
“Oh, Lord, what is happening? Did I not want to go on with You? Did I not say I wanted You to break me so that I could become a great preacher, so that I could become a great servant of the Lord, so that I could become a contributing factor in the house of God? Everything is going wrong, Lord.”
God knows your old Jacob only too well. Your Jacob may have a very sweet, beatific, pious smile upon his face, but God is not kidded. God knows just what is behind you and in you.
Your Jacob may spout Scripture endlessly, may know all about the house of God. God is not deceived. He knows the Jacob in you. And when you said, “Oh, I will go the whole way,” then God said, “Very well. I take you at your word. You shall come to your Jabbok.”
So here is the first thing: this Jabbok experience is an absolute necessity in principle. I underline that, because it is not always the same in detail with everyone. But everyone has to come to a place where they are at their wits’ end, where they cannot go forward and cannot go back, and they are alone.
They cannot call in brother so-and-so, or brother so-and-so, or sister so-and-so. For the first time, God may have even strained the relationships with those nearest to you so that you are totally alone. Pure Jacob.
Here is the second thing I want to say this evening about this Jabbok experience: you cannot become Israel until you have a true self-knowledge. Now, I want to be very careful here in what I say.
You cannot become a prince with God and with men. You cannot become the one whom God can use to fulfil His purpose until you have a true self-knowledge. We are not ready for our Jabbok until we know and see ourselves in reality.
Now, this does not come by suddenly saying, “Oh, I must go away and sit down and inspect myself. I will now go and wearily investigate myself.” This, again, is just religion. This is not the experience I am talking about. This is the face of God, not my face.
But, you see, God, in the most wonderful way, brings us face to face with ourselves before we can see God face to face.
Self-preservation is far too strong a factor in us all to allow us to come to a self-knowledge. Most of us have such an instinct of self-preservation that we are frightened to really see ourselves. That is why some people are afraid of the Holy Spirit.
It is an intuitive knowledge that if the Holy Spirit really comes, it is going to cost me, in actual fact—not a sentimental idea, but in actual fact—a lot. And something draws back.
I am quite amazed at the people who do not know themselves. I suppose you have all got examples of it.
I know a brother who wrote to me some years ago. In a long letter, bitterly complaining about certain other brothers, he said at the end, “Now, Lance, you know that I am one of the most humble men in the world.”
Now, this brother was a very generous brother, but there was one thing he was not: humble. But he thought he was one of the most humble men in the world. He really meant it. He loved the Lord. He was very zealous, very devoted. He had real church truth, and yet he thought he was a humble man. He thought God had dealt with him, but He had not. His pride was his great problem.
I remember somebody else who was always telling me how generous they were. Well, go and ask anybody about this particular person: they were the meanest believer I had met in decades. They counted the cents.
Bless my heart and soul, and they thought they were so generous. They gave ten dollars and felt the whole place should come in. They had been so generous. Trumpets blow. The red carpet rolled out in heaven. “Brother So-and-So has again been generous. He has given ten dollars to the widow’s fund.”
But it is amazing how we do not know ourselves. There was another sister, I remember, in the church I used to belong to when I was first saved—a Baptist place. She used to say, “Now, Lance, you can tell me anything. You know, there is one thing I can do: keep a secret.”
Now, this dear sister—we used to call her Auntie Mac—it did not matter: if you wanted something to go round the whole Richmond area within twenty-four hours, tell Auntie Mac and tell her it was in confidence. It would go right down the whole area.
She thought she was a wonderful person at keeping secrets. Now listen, I know you all laugh, but is this not true of us all? Is this not the problem in church fellowship? Some people think they are so short in speaking—like me—but we are long-winded. People say, “You are so long-winded,” but we do not believe we are long-winded.
We all have our problems. Some people say, “You know, my great gift is that I can endure.” They cannot. That is their weakness. And very often what we think is our strong point is, in actual fact, our weak point.
What a work Satan has done in deception. What a lie has written itself into our very bloodstream—the bloodstream of our fallen nature. And what a work God has to do to cause the truth to make us free.
Now, this matter of a true self-knowledge is truth setting us free. When a person begins to really see themselves, they are free. Jacob never saw himself. Do you not see this? He never saw himself.
He did not know that he was a deceiver or a supplanter. If someone had accused him of being a deceiver or a supplanter, he would have been outraged. He would have been full of righteous indignation. “Me? Me? A deceiver? A twister? Me?”
Is it not interesting how the angel said to Jacob, “What is your name?” At this time Jacob understood himself. He could have said, “Oh, I am Abraham’s grandson.” That should have got him through, he might have felt, with a blessing from the angel. Or he could have said, “I am Isaac’s son.” That would have got him a blessing, maybe.
But Jacob finally simply said, “Jacob”—the one who supplants, the one who takes hold of another’s heel, tripping them, bowling them back, so that he can take the first place.
How did God bring him to this place? Well, it took quite a few years. But, you know, the way God did it was very simply: by putting him together with other people who were as big a twister as himself.
And this is God’s unfailing way of bringing you and me to a recognition of ourselves: He puts us with people like ourselves. Only we do not see it.
Now, perhaps you do not see at present what I am getting at. But, you see, what God did was this: Jacob was the biggest twister in the Middle East. So God said, “Now, who is the second biggest twister in the Middle East? Uncle Laban. Right. We will put Jacob with Uncle Laban for twenty years, and they shall swindle each other.”
And that is exactly what happened.
Jacob comes to Laban and says, “Do you think you could hire me? I just want to work, of course. You will give me wages.”
And then Uncle Laban said, “Are you married?” And Jacob said, “No.” “Do you like my daughters?” And Jacob said, “I have fallen in love with Rachel.” “Why,” said Uncle Laban, “how splendid! All right then, you work for me for seven years and you will get Rachel.” “Right?” “Right.”
And Jacob worked seven years. That does not sound like too much of a swindler, does it? There must have been a lot of good in Jacob—a lot that was attractive, a lot that was beautiful, a lot that was noble. The man worked his fingers to the bone for seven years.
And at the end, at the wedding ceremony—if you know anything about Oriental Jewish customs—of course he did not see the bride. She was all heavily veiled. It was only when the whole ritual was over, the ceremony done, and the two were married, that, lifting the veil, he found to his horror Leah.
Can you hear Jacob? I can hear him in fury, outraged, almost speechless. “How could anyone do such a thing? How can anyone perpetrate such a swindle? How could you do this to your own flesh and blood? My uncle did this to me—his nephew, my mother’s brother! Have you ever?”
“How did you think? I have worked seven years for this man, for Rachel, and what do I find? I am married to Leah.” Now, just put yourself into this position. Would you not be scandalized?
He never thought. He never once thought, “I swindled and deceived my twin brother. I deceived my old blind father.” It never entered his head. Only, “How could anyone do such a dreadful thing to a man like me—his own flesh and blood, his own nephew?”
I have some sympathy with dear old Uncle Laban. You may not, but I do. Because according to Oriental Jewish custom, and indeed Bedouin custom to this very day, if once you marry a younger daughter, no one will ever marry the older one, because they say there must have been something wrong with her. They have overlooked her.
So it was as good as putting Leah on the shelf. Dear old Uncle Laban, you see, swindlers are not just dark, malicious people. He must have thought, “Oh, my goodness. Now Rachel—well, it is not fair to Leah.”
So then he went to have a talk with Leah, and he said, “Now, Leah, my dear, I know you are very unhappy about this business with Rachel. We are never going to get you married if this goes ahead. You have got to fall in with this plan. Now, dear, you do walk like your sister. Act like your sister, and keep your big mouth shut until the ceremony is over.”
In other words, it was not only Uncle Laban who was in on the swindle; so was Leah.
So you understand now what I am trying to say. Here was poor Jacob, and suddenly he saw himself for the first time. He saw himself in Uncle Laban. And now he looked at Leah and he saw himself in Leah twice.
There was one person he thought was the sweetest, dearest, most lovely creation of God, and that was his beloved Rachel. Never a wicked thought came into sweet Rachel’s mind.
So he worked. Though the agreement was broken, when he was outraged, Uncle Laban said, “Oh, my boy, my boy, I understand it all. But what could we do with poor Leah? She would have been on the shelf for the rest of her life. We could not do it, my boy. We had to get her married. Forgive us.”
“But listen, if you work another seven years, you can have Rachel. You can have her at the end of this week. But you must work another seven years.” So dear Jacob said, “Right,” and down he went.
He always thought Rachel was the sweetest thing in the world. Now Uncle Laban and Jacob spent their whole time swindling one another for twenty years. Jacob never realized that it was himself. He always thought it was Uncle Laban. It only slowly came home to him that he was seeing himself in somebody else.
And then he had all the problems with Leah and the rivalries between Leah and Rachel, and all the little tricks they got up to. All deception, manipulation—the whole thing was scheming. He saw himself in Leah, and he always took the side of Rachel.
There came a time when Jacob was absolutely finished. He saw himself, and then God said, “I am the God of Bethel, the house of God. Go back to the land of your nativity.”
And so Jacob gets up and goes. He goes quietly at night while Uncle Laban and the other men of the household were out shearing the sheep. He went off, taking his own flocks and everything else, which were pretty extensive. Off he went with his wives, with handmaids, with all the children—a great company.
They had gone three days’ journey when someone rushed up to Jacob and said, “Look, there is a dust patch on the scene—some horsemen riding furiously.” And I suppose Jacob thought, “I wonder who it is.” Then, to his horror, he sees coming out of the dust, thundering forward on an Arab stallion, dear old Uncle Laban. And the look on Uncle Laban’s face was not one of peace.
When finally he reaches the whole company, Uncle Laban jumps down. He cannot wait for it. He said, “How could you do such a thing, stealing off while all of us were out shearing the sheep? I could not even kiss my daughters. I could not kiss my grandchildren. Is that the way? Why did you steal off like this?”
“And furthermore,” he said, pointing, I suppose, his finger at Jacob, “you have stolen the family gods.”
Now, there was one thing Jacob did not do, and that was steal the family gods. He did not believe in the family gods—all those idols. So he was outraged by it. And he said, “Look here, you. You changed my wages ten times in twenty years, swindled me over Leah and Rachel, and I had nothing to do with your idols.”
“Search everybody. And let me tell you this: whoever you find these idols with, in their keeping or baggage, they will die.”
And Laban’s men went everywhere. And it says in Hebrew, much more feelingfully than in English, they felt the baggage.
And Laban came to Rachel. He said, “I am going to search your place too.” She told her father, “Do so.” And he went everywhere, feeling the baggage. Rachel was sitting on the camel saddle, which is a big thing.
And she said, “Papa, I am not feeling too well. You do not want me to get up, do you?” “No, my darling, of course not.” And he went all around feeling. What he did not know was that Rachel was sitting on the family gods. She had got them all tucked under the camel saddle.
Now, you wonder why. Was Rachel a believer in idols? No. You see, in the old days the idols were the title deeds to property and flocks. And by right, Jacob’s wives had a lot of their father’s property.
And Rachel thought in her little scheming mind, “We are going to leave without any of the title deeds to everything that should be mine and my sister’s? Certainly not.” And she went round and took all the title deeds, just like you would take them out of a box in the bank and put them all under the saddle.
The tragedy was this: what Jacob had said was prophetic. Within a year—within months—Rachel had died.
So my point is this: finally, after all this experience, Jacob sees himself first in Uncle Laban, then in his wife Leah, and then in the purest, sweetest person in the world, in whose heart and mind never came an evil thought—dear Rachel. And suddenly, he sees himself in Rachel.
That was the end. For the first time, Jacob was sick—sick of himself. And God planned Jabbok just then. He was alone. And then the angel came.
Have you come to this place yet? Maybe that brother and sister you find so difficult, who always rubs you up the wrong way, perhaps you do not even realize is the person you are seeing yourself in. They are only a mirror. You are seeing yourself.
That person you have to live with, that you cannot get on with—you are actually seeing yourself. Some of those things you get so angry about in your children are yourself in them. Some of the things that you get so angry about in others are actually your own self reflected. Only you do not know it.
You will come to it. You will come to it. This is an unpalatable truth, for we have all got things about one another that we cannot stick. And it is a most unpalatable truth that maybe we are seeing ourselves in them. But that is how we finally come to a true self-knowledge.
Then we are ready for our Jabbok.
Now, I want finally to speak about the desperation of true faith. Is there such an experience as this Jabbok experience? Most certainly there is.
Wesley wrote it in years ago in a hymn that is never sung today. Actually, it has twelve verses. I am not going to read you all twelve verses. But one day Charles Wesley, in an absolute sickness of himself, decided he would shut himself up all day and all night with God, and wrote the most amazing hymn through the hours of that time.
And this is what he wrote:
Come, O Thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see;
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee.
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.I need not tell Thee who I am,
My sin and misery declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name,
Look on Thy hands, and read it there.
But who, I ask Thee, who art Thou?
Tell me Thy name, and tell me now.In vain Thou strugglest to get free,
I never will unloose my hold:
Art Thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of Thy love unfold.
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go
Till I Thy name, Thy nature know.Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquered by my instant prayer.
Speak, or Thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me if Thy name is Love.’Tis Love! ’Tis Love! Thou diedst for me;
I hear Thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee;
Pure universal Love Thou art.
To me, to all, Thy mercies move;
Thy nature and Thy name is Love.Lame as I am, I take the prey;
Hell, earth, and sin with ease o’ercome.
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And, as a bounding hart, I run
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and Thy name is Love.
That is the monument to a man’s experience of God. It does happen. If we had the time, I could speak of all kinds of men in the history of the church, going right back to Augustine, even earlier, of men who have had to come to their own Jabbok, who have come to a knowledge of themselves and have had this desperation of true faith.
What a beautiful phrase that was in that hymn—partly why I read it: “Confident in self-despair.”
Oh, the confidence of self-despair. While you still have confidence in yourself, you have always got a fire exit, a fire escape. But once you are finished, you cannot go back; you cannot go forward.
Into your heart, by the Spirit of God, comes the faith of true desperation. Self-despair, self-knowledge—it is not enough. It is true faith, the gift of God, which enables you to get hold of the Lord and not let Him go.
I will tell you something. If God brings you to your Jabbok, remember this if you forget everything else: never let the Lord go.
Take hold of Him by faith, and do not let Him go.
Margaret Barber also wrote an extraordinary hymn. It is actually in your hymnbook, I am glad to say. I want to just read it to you.
Margaret Barber was called by God to go out to China as a missionary. She went out to China with a very respectable evangelical mission and worked for many years. But she was incredibly successful, especially with young men, and aroused great hostility and jealousy in the missionary community.
Finally, one evil person charged her with committing adultery. Many in the missionary community believed it about Margaret Barber. She came home, asked by the mission if she would go home on an early furlough. She came home in disgrace, her reputation destroyed.
Because she had already come into an experience with the Spirit and the cross, she would not defend herself. In Britain, broken-hearted, spiritually bankrupt, sick of herself, she went to see a godly bishop called Handley Moule.
And he, listening to her whole story, said, “I believe you are innocent. I believe you.” Then she said, “What shall I do?” He said, “Did God call you to China?” “Yes,” she said. Then he said, “Has God finished with the call?” “No,” she said. “Then,” he said, “you shall go back to China.”
“But,” she said, “I cannot go back with the mission.” “No,” he said, “that does not matter. Go back with God.” “What, on my own?” she said. “Yes, on your own. You are better to fall into His hands.”
So Margaret Barber, for her safety, took another sister with her—a prayer partner—and the two of them went out to China. They went back to the place where she had lived and worked, but instead of going into the city, she went some miles outside the city walls, to a place called Pagoda Anchorage.
And there she spent the rest of her life in a ministry of intercession. She had nothing to show for it. Oh, she had something. On Sunday afternoons, she used to have a Bible class for young fellows—students, nineteen, twenty, twenty-five. They came. And that was all she had to show for her life outwardly, nothing else.
But a whole number of those boys became household names amongst Christians in China after she died. And the greatest of them, of course, was Watchman Nee, who learned more from Margaret Barber than from any other person on earth.
She gave her life. She let it go. And this is what she wrote:
Wrecked outright on Jesus’ breast,
Only wrecked souls thus can sing;
Little boats that hug the shore,
Fearing what the storm may bring,
Never find on Jesus’ breast
All that wrecked souls mean by rest.Wrecked outright! So we lament;
But when storms have done their worst,
Then the soul, surviving all,
In eternal arms is nursed;
There to find that naught can move
One embosomed in such love.Wrecked outright! No more to own
E’en a craft to sail the sea;
Still a voyager, yet now
Anchored to infinity.
Nothing left to do but fling
Care aside and simply cling.Wrecked outright! ’Twas purest gain;
Henceforth other craft can see
That the storm may be a boon,
That, however rough the sea,
God Himself doth watchful stand,
For the wreck is in His hand.
Now, that wreck in the hand of God, that voyager anchored to infinity, was the one God used to school and instruct a man who meant more to the church in China than any other single servant of the Lord in that great people, and who has come to mean untold wealth to millions of believers throughout the nations.
She never knew it. She died in faith. But what would have happened if she had never been wrecked? What would have happened if she had never come to her Jabbok? What would have happened with Wesley? What hymns would we never have had if he had not come to his Jabbok?
Do you see what I am talking about?
“I will not let You go, unless You bless me.” Jacob’s natural strength was broken. The Angel of the Lord, seeking to get away from him, said, “The day is breaking. Let Me go.” “I will not let You go unless You bless me.” “What is your name?”
As if the angel did not know. As if the Lord did not know—He had planned the whole thing. You would almost think the Lord was a little Jacob-like. “What is thy name?”
“Jacob. Yaakov—the one who supplants, the one who twists, the one who deceives.”
“Thy name shall no more be called Yaakov, Jacob, but Israel. Israel shall thy name be; for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed.”
Do not ever think God is going to carry you to the throne. The sovereignty of God is behind your coming to the throne. The election of God is behind you. All the great love of God is behind you. But you have got to come to your Jabbok, and in your Jabbok you have got to take hold of the Lord in the desperation of true faith.
You will never get a thing by this phlegmatic, kind of level-headed, emotionless attitude to spiritual things. Only when at last God can bring you to the place of sheer desperation will God be able to set you on fire so that you become like an old thorn bush—nothing in yourself, but the flame of God’s presence forever in you.
You have become eternal fuel for eternal fire. There is no other way. This is the cross. This is the cross. This is what the dear, blessed Holy Spirit brings you to. He brings you to your Calvary. He brings you to a stark Roman gibbet, a scaffold.
Either you will know spiritually the dislocation of your hip—not some little pain, some little arthritic pain somewhere. Oh, I know arthritis is an awful thing; I should not say that to anybody who suffers from it. But not just some little sort of pain, a twinge here and there, something in the hip that reminds you that you are getting older. No! A dislocated hip.
You will never be the same. Never. Any man or woman who has come to this being wrecked outright will never be the same again. Oh, it is the same personality; it is all there. But they will never be the same.
From then on, it is the face of God. “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”
I would imagine that is worth having your natural strength dealt with. It is worth a touch of God upon your life like that, so that you, Jacob, have become Israel. It is worth it—not that people say, “What a wonderful person you are,” but that forever after they see the face of God.
Do you not think that was a beautiful thing? The Lord said in the Book of Numbers, in what we call the Aaronic blessing—you all know it, I am quite sure; you have it in Numbers 6:
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make His face to shine upon thee,
And be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee,
And give thee peace.
It is all the presence of the Lord. “The Lord make His presence shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His presence upon thee, and give thee peace.” Yes.
Are you ready for this?
Now I want finally just to say this: what is all this talk about the house of God? What is all this talk about the church of God? What is all this talk about the eternal purpose of God? What is all this talk about overcomers, unless it is that Jacobs are becoming Israel?
If it is just a matter of church patterns, church order, gathering saints together, and all the rest of it, let us be done with it. That is important, but it is the least important.
The essential thing about the house of God is that Jacob becomes Israel. And that is why God calls us Israel: Jacob into Israel.
There was another lady, another sister many of you have heard of, and this I am going to close with. This is the truth. Many of you have heard of her—Amy Carmichael. She was another remarkable servant of the Lord.
One day, going to a nearby town to see a new property in which they would open work to rescue girls in temple prostitution, when they got to this nearby Hindu town, the man with the key did not come. For one hour they waited, and finally he came over an hour late.
But in that hour the tropical dust had fallen like a curtain. He fitted the key in the old door of the walled courtyard and pushed the door open. Then he stood back respectfully, as did the rest of the party, to let Amy Carmichael step in first.
No one knew that coolies had dug a trench in the wrong place, just inside the gate—nine feet deep. Amy Carmichael fell. She broke her ankle, she broke her hip, she broke her arm, and she damaged her back.
Gently, they lifted her out of the ditch, put her on the jeep, and drove twenty-seven miles to the nearest hospital over rough, unmade roads. Amy Carmichael took it all wonderfully. She was an incredible person. She knew the Lord.
She thought she was only going to be on her back for a few months, and she wrote her first book—other than that one which scandalized the whole missionary world, Things as They Are. They never talked to her again in India, even to the day of her death.
The first book she wrote was Rose from Brier. I cannot remember it all, but I do remember this verse. I could not find it anywhere, otherwise I would have got it for you:
From Thy briar shall blow
A rose for others.
Come then, say to me,
My Lord, my Love,
Thou art enough for me.
In the preface to that little book, she said, “I feel as if I am a hypocrite. I am writing this book to people who are suffering incurably. I shall be walking about again within six months, the doctors say. But I felt I had learned these lessons.”
“Pardon me, those of you,” she said, “who will read these lines, who are incurably or inexplicably on your back or crippled. But may God help you.” She did not know that for twenty-seven years she would remain on her back.
Out of that life came a ministry which I have found is the only ministry in the whole world that comes to deal with incurable suffering and help. I have found nothing like the words of Amy Carmichael for those who have that kind of inexplicable suffering in their lives.
Now I want to close with this most beautiful of her poems, in my estimation:
Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die, and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swoon.
Hast thou no wound?No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole. Can he have followed far
Who has no wound, no scar?
Shall we pray?
Lord, we all love to be called Thy Israel, but few of us understand what it means. We pray, O Lord, that somehow we shall understand that at the heart of this gospel there is this transforming work of grace from Jacob into Israel.
Oh, God, Thou knowest every life in this place. Thou knowest all those of us who have not come to our Jabbok. Lord, bring us there. And those who have, renew us, that we may know, Lord, what it is to serve Thee with a pure heart.
Lord, burn this evening’s message into all our hearts and lives. Help us, Lord, if we are the ones who are hindering Thy purpose from being fulfilled or realized. Help us to see it, Lord, and bring us to an end of ourselves so that, Lord, Thou canst do the work that Thou dost want to do.
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Stand and sing number 156.