We turn to the Scriptures, in the New Testament, in the Hebrew letter, chapter 11. One verse: verse 21.
By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
Shall we just bow together in a further word of prayer?
Our beloved Father, we want to thank Thee that we are here in Thy presence this evening. We have already said, Lord, we just want to hear Thee. We believe Thou hast something to say to us, Lord.
We just together appropriate that provision Thou hast made for speaking and hearing, that there may be nothing, Lord, of flesh in this—either in the speaking or in the hearing—but we may know that divine enabling and empowering that will mean Thy purpose for this time will be fulfilled in its entirety.
Lord, we give Thee all the praise, and all the worship, and all the thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now it is too late to go back over all these times we have had on Jacob’s life and character. I was this morning talking about Jacob the overcomer, and I spoke on that little word:
The lame shall take the prey.
—Isaiah 33:23
Jacob was the lame one; Esau was the whole one. Esau was the hunter, but he did not take the prey. Jacob, in the end, crippled by God, was the one who took the prey. He reached the throne of God and came to the place that God destined for him.
Now this whole matter of overcoming is, in many ways, very, very important. There are many misunderstandings and misapprehensions about the matter of overcoming. We talked a little bit about that this morning.
What I want to do now is to go on a further step this evening and talk a little more about Jacob the overcomer. But this time I want to speak about him as the worshipper and the blessing.
Because overcoming is absolutely meaningless unless it means that, finally, you and I become genuine worshippers of the Lord, and those who can impart an actual, realistic, practical blessing to others.
If we cannot do that, we can neither worship the Lord nor impart a blessing to others. We are not overcomers.
Overcomers are not people who just know a certain amount of truth, have a certain outline of doctrine, or are faithful to a certain form of doctrine. It includes that. I want to be quite clear on this matter.
Truth is truth, and pure doctrine is pure doctrine. We cannot despise these things, as some have, and go off the rails. But in the final analysis, it is more than just a mental appreciation of truth, or even an inward revelation of truth. We have got to know truth becoming flesh and blood, so that it does something in us.
God wants to bring you and me to the throne.
Now, it is a very strange mentality that somehow or other has grown up amongst the people of God. We have the idea that just because people are saved, they are all, willy-nilly, because they have been converted, going to sit on golden thrones judging the earth.
It is an extraordinary idea. Just because a person is converted, they are going to sit on a throne—all the whole universe draped with thrones, and believers sitting on them.
The idea seems to be one of glory, of exhibition. Somehow or other, the idea being that the throne is the sort of top of the pyramid. When you have come to the top, you sit there in glory, everyone admires you, and you are a centre of attraction.
This has got so much into the human mentality of this whole thing to do with the throne that that is how we think of kingship. We think of it as being a kind of exhibitionism, basically—a kind of focal point of attraction, a kind of superficial glory.
This is not God’s idea of kingship, nor is it God’s idea of reigning from the throne. God’s idea of kingship is service.
He that shall be greatest among you shall be bondslave of all.
The idea of God in kingship is that people are not attracting to themselves, but are serving others. They are vehicles for the authority of God, for the welfare of others, for the care of others, for the feeding of others, for the correction of others, for the strengthening of others. Something quite different to our mentality of kingship.
God forbid if some of the Christians I know ever get onto thrones. Some Christians have not allowed God to produce a spiritual capacity in them of any kind.
Some cannot even rule the kitchen sink. They cannot even rule their homes. They cannot rule in their offices. Yet somehow they seem to think that, in the twinkling of an eye, something is going to happen and they can sit on a throne and rule a vast area.
It does not say this in the Word of God. It says, “If we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified with Him.” It says, “If we serve, we shall also reign with Him.”
Jesus said:
Him that overcometh, I will grant to him to sit down with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
How did the Lord Jesus overcome? By a Bethlehem. That is how He overcame. By a Nazareth. That is how He overcame. By a Jordan—a baptism in the Jordan. That is how He overcame.
By three years of selfless ministry, day and night. That is how He overcame. By a Gethsemane:
Not My will, but Thine, be done.
That is how He overcame. By a Calvary where, through the eternal Spirit, He offered Himself up to God without spot or blemish. That is how He overcame.
That is how you and I overcome. We also have to know that overcoming life of our Lord in us: the Bethlehem life, the Jordan life, the three years of ministry life in us, the Calvary life, and, thank God, the resurrection and ascension life.
How does God do it? He does it by bringing us to our own Jabbok, where Jacob becomes Israel; where the old scheming, manipulating, deceiving Jacob, in bondage to his own natural strength and self-will, is crippled by God at the heart of his natural power.
From that day onwards, he was a crippled man. He limped for the rest of his life. He did not call that experience sanctification, or a second blessing, or lameness, or brokenness, or even a baptism. He just called it the face of God.
That is the kind of experience I want. Is that not the kind of experience you want?
It may cost us the crippling of our natural life, the disrupting of our natural talents, and the cutting off of our natural energy. But thank God, if it means we become an Israel, then we have power with God and with men that we never had before.
It is no longer a psychological thing—how to whip up atmosphere, how to keep up something, how to persuade people. It becomes a matter of the flame of God within us.
Jacob to Israel.
At the very beginning of these times, I said to you we have to take note of the life of Jacob for this reason: there is no biblical personality or character who has had a greater influence upon all that followed than Jacob.
After all, the people of God are not called Abraham. They are not called Isaac. They are not called Moses. They are not called Samuel. They are not called David. These are great men of God, but they are called Jacob, and they are called Israel forever.
All the way through the Book, God says, “Fear not, O Jacob,” speaking to all His people:
I have created thee.
O Israel, I have formed thee.
I am with thee.
I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.
Overcoming—what is overcoming? Is it so that we can sit down on a throne and sort of just exhibit glory, as if somehow or other we are all going to be little focal points of attraction? No.
Overcoming is that we have gone the way the Master went, and we come out with a character that can do no other than reign.
Have you ever contemplated the Lord Jesus? Shall I tell you where, in His whole life, He exhibited kingship more wonderfully, more deeply, more comprehensively, than at any other point?
Not when He calmed the sea. With a single word He said to the storm, “Be still,” and instantly there was a calm.
Not when He fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish. That was tremendous.
Not when He healed the leper, cleansed the leper, gave the deaf their hearing, the dumb their speech, the lame their ability to walk, or even raised the dead.
I will tell you where the Lord Jesus exhibited His kingship more than any other place: when He was beaten black and blue, His beard pulled out, spittle over His face, mocked at, dressed up in a soldier’s crimson robe, with a reed stuck in His hand for a sceptre, and a crown of thorns jammed upon His head.
He was made the butt of every coarse joke, made the object of horseplay. That is where royalty loses its mystique.
We speak, in the countries I come from where we have kingdoms, of the mystique of royalty. But when a man is stripped naked, beaten black and blue so that he is hardly recognisable as a human being, he is a pitiable object. He has lost his dignity, and when he has lost his dignity, he has lost his royalty—but not Jesus.
He never answered them a word.
That was the point when the whole universe—the unseen universe—was on its face in worship. There was no truer word when Pilate brought Him out and said:
Behold your King.
That was the point when, finally, the whole invisible world, even hell itself, had to acknowledge that this One was worthy of the throne of God.
From that moment, there could be nothing that stopped the Lord Jesus. That was the point when it was clear He must ascend and take the throne at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Now, dear people, thank God most of us will never be called upon to go through an experience like that, although some believers have. But in principle, we all have to go this way.
We have got the idea of kingship that it is something to do with a sceptre, with a crown, with a golden throne, with magnificent robes of raiment—the raiment and robes of royalty.
I want to tell you something. There was never a sceptre more powerful in the whole universe than that reed in the hands of Jesus. There was never a crown more glorious than that crown of thorns upon His head.
That was supreme royalty. And do you know why He did it? For you. For me. It was service. That is kingship.
He was prepared to be beaten black and blue. He was prepared to be despised. He was prepared to endure being the object of horseplay—crude horseplay of rough, vulgar soldiery—for you, for me, that He might bring many sons to glory.
That is the overcomer. That is what overcoming is all about.
It is not position. It is not title. It is not status. It is not building some empire over which we can have influence spiritually.
Overcoming, finally, is that God gets in you the kind of character that is lamb-like. Because it is lamb-like, it has the Lion of Judah in it. It must come to the throne. It can do no other than come to the throne.
That is what God is doing in your life. Do not despise that kitchen sink. Do not despise those children that are so lively. Do not despise that difficult office.
Do not despise all the problems in relationships you have with husband, wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters, employers, and employees. These are the ways that God brings us through to a place where we are overcomers by His grace.
What are we talking about? Are we going to join some worldwide universal system of overcomers? Every such system is doomed to failure before it has begun.
Overcomers do not ever overcome en masse. Overcomers are found within the church, even within the true church, upon the right foundation, where stones are being built together.
There the Lord says, “To him that overcometh.” He never says, “To those who overcome.” He says, “To him that overcometh.”
Jacob was left alone.
To him that overcometh—there is an aloneness about this matter of overcoming. Others may help you; others may encourage you. But in the final analysis, no one can overcome for you. You have to overcome alone.
That is where there is burnt into you the character of kingship. Then you will be brought to the throne. Then Jacob becomes an Israel. That is the meaning of the house of God. That is the meaning of the church of God: Jacob has become Israel by the grace of God—the One who said, “Jacob have I loved,” the One who chose Jacob.
That is the purpose of God for you. Now, is it not interesting that whoever was the writer of the Hebrew letter—and we have all got ideas, no doubt, about who wrote the Hebrew letter—sums up the life of Jacob in one sentence?
There are those who firmly believe it was the Apostle Paul. I will eat my hat if it was. Still, I shall be proved wrong on a number of things. So, if I am wrong on this thing, I shall apologise to Paul.
Personally, I do not know who wrote it. Sometimes I think Apollos might have written this letter, but still, I do not know. But whoever wrote this letter, by the Holy Spirit—that is the point—sums up the life of Jacob in one sentence.
Really, I find it very, very interesting how he sums it. He does not say, “By faith Jacob became Israel.” That is what I would have done.
I would have said, “By faith Jacob became Israel.” Or there may have been other things you could have said: “By faith Jacob became the father of the house of Israel.” You could have put that. It would not have been wrong.
But he says:
By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
So the overcomer is not only someone who is reigning with Christ, exercising the authority of Christ, who knows what it is increasingly to use the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who knows weapons mighty through God to the casting down of strongholds, the casting down of imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
He is also a worshipper.
Jacob was no worshipper. I do not read anywhere that Jacob worshipped. Now, do not get me wrong on this thing. Jacob was not an ugly, unattractive man, as he is so often portrayed.
He was an extremely attractive man, in my estimation. I have to be careful what I say. After all, we are going to meet him one day. I hear the most incredible things said about some saints, so I always feel I must be a little careful what one says about them.
But I personally do not honestly think that Jacob was an unattractive person. I think he was a very attractive man. I do not see him as a round-shouldered, stooping, hand-wringing individual of the kind some people imagine Jacob to have been.
Most of the real swindlers—and I have met a few in my time—most of the real swindlers I have ever met, the real deceivers, and I do not mean badly, but those who have got that type of nature, are very attractive people.
Really, they get round you. As we say on my side of the Atlantic, they could talk the hind leg off a donkey. They have got a gift.
This man was an attractive man. But, you know, he was not a worshipper. He had tremendous spiritual acumen. He saw what his twin brother did not see: that that birthright was of eternal value. He saw that that blessing was of eternal value.
He did not despise it like his brother Esau. Now, the way he got it was entirely wrong—both the birthright and the blessing.
He had real acumen, real spiritual insight. He had revelation of God. He saw the house of God. He saw that ladder set up on earth, its top reaching heaven, angels ascending and descending, and the Lord standing above it.
He said:
This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
He had more understanding than some Christians of the house of God. Yet he was never a worshipper.
We never read that he bowed down and worshipped the Lord when he got the birthright. We never hear that he bowed down and worshipped the Lord when he got the blessing. We never hear that, when the Lord appeared to him, he fell down and worshipped.
We do hear that he set up a pillar, poured oil upon it, called upon the name of the Lord, and then said:
If Thou wilt be with me, and wilt keep me in this way that I go, and wilt give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God.
And this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.
He was a bargainer, not a worshipper.
Now, many Christians are bargainers; they are not worshippers. Is it not true? We say, “Now, Lord, I will go up to this conference as long as You do this, and this, and this for me.”
“Lord, I will give so much of my money to You as long as You do this and this for me.” As soon as the Lord comes, we say, “Very well, Lord, all right. I must tell You, it is a tremendous sacrifice for me, but, Lord, if You will do this and this and this, I will do this.”
We are tremendously self-centred people. Let us face it. Has anyone here got saved because they loved God?
I have gone all over the world asking people, “Is there anybody here who got saved out of a heart of love for God? You loved the Lord so much you said, ‘I want to be saved’?” No, I have not found one yet.
In all the thousands and thousands of places I have been, I have not found a single person who ever got saved because they loved God. The reason we all get saved is that we are either miserable, unhappy, our life is ruined, our marriage has gone to pieces, our business has collapsed, we are empty inside, we are full of fear, we are afraid of hell, or we need to get to heaven—anything like that, which is totally self-centred.
Is it not true? And do you know, God loves Jacob so much He plays along. He knows very well that there is no way of getting you into the family of God and no way of getting you into the kingdom of heaven except He says, “All right, all right. You have not got peace; I have got it. You have not got life; I have got it. You have not got a whole life; I will give you a whole life.”
Is it not true? Even when the Lord commands us to repent, we only repent when our lives are so hopeless, so wrecked, so empty, that we feel, “Oh, I need peace. I need joy. I need to know the meaning of life.”
Then, once we have got saved, we are like little babies. Now there is a right place to be a baby, but when we are first babies, we are no worshippers. Let us face it: we are still bargainers.
Every baby is a bargainer. It is true, is it not? That wailing and crying—very quickly that little foot or two of flesh and blood has weighed up mother and father, the uncles and the aunts, and knows just how to wrap the whole household round its little finger.
There is a right place for babyhood. We come and take a baby, and we make all these wonderful little noises. We give it comforters. We give it rattles. We give it toys—anything to stop it crying. Oh, we will do anything for it.
We as Christians are just like that. “Oh,” we say, “I want my rattle, Lord. I want my rattle. I want a new toy, Lord.” And the Lord says, “Oh, you dear little one. I will give you a new toy. Here it is.”
We cry, and we cry, and we cry, and the Lord comes and puts His arms around us and smothers us with kisses. We have such a wonderful time with the Lord.
Do you not remember that when you were saved? I feel sorry for anybody who was saved and did not have that kind of babyhood experience. It is simply wonderful. God does wonderful things with us when we are babes.
But then, of course, we make a big mistake. We think that since we were saved on the principle of what we get, and since we have gone through spiritual babyhood on what we get, we will now live according to what we get.
That is where we lose the joy of our salvation. There comes a point when the Father says, “No more toys, no more rattles, no more comforters. If you cry and scream and shriek, I shall leave you to cry and scream and shriek.”
That may explain why some of you have been crying and screaming and shrieking, and you say, “It is funny, the Lord just seems to have forsaken me. He never comes near me these days.”
“I used to make a whimper, and there He was: a wonderful sense of the Lord’s presence, His arms around me, a kiss, a spiritual kiss, a comforter, a new toy, something to keep me going. Now where is the blessedness that once I knew when first I saw the Lord?”
Then you hear about a deeper deepening of spiritual life, comfort, and you say, “That is what I need.” So you go like a jet-propelled bomber up to the convention, and you sit there all agog: “Can I get something out of this?”
Many people get a real spiritual experience, but it does not last. You know why? I have known people upon whom the Holy Spirit has fallen, and it has totally changed their life.
I have known people who have come into an experience of what it is to be crucified with Christ and to know the resurrection life of Christ, and it has never left them. I have known other people who have had a high point, and within a month or two it has soured. Then they cannot understand.
I will tell you why. Such an experience has got to lead us where we move over from a self-centred basis to a Christ-centred basis. That is where we first become an overcomer.
There comes a time when God says, “No more childhood. You have got to grow up. You have got to think of others now. No more my will, but His will. No more my satisfaction, but His satisfaction. No more my joy, but His joy. No more my inheritance, but His inheritance.”
You have gone over to the other foot. That is a big step and requires spiritual surgery. That is when a Jacob becomes an Israel.
Now, you see, this matter of a worshipper: when it is all “Gimme, gimme, gimme,” everything is what you can get. You are acquiring, acquiring, acquiring.
Every meeting is judged: “I did not think much of that; I did not get anything out of that. I did not think much of that book; I did not get anything out of that. I did not think much of that speaker; I did not get anything out of it. I did not think much of that conference; I did not get much out of it.”
Everything is judged by what you got out of it, or what you put in. It is not judged by the service you entered; it is judged by what you got.
When you are that kind of person—and all of us have been that—we are not worshippers. We may think we are worshipping the Lord. We can sing a few hymns, everyone can lift their hands, and we can just flow together, as it were. We think, “Oh, I am worshipping the Lord,” but God is not fooled. You are not a worshipper.
You are in the flow of that meeting, that is true, but you are not a worshipper. A worshipper is someone who has lost themselves.
That is why we were made to worship. No human being is happy until they move out of themselves.
We are so made that when we are self-conscious, it is like hell. When all the time all we can think about is ourselves—what we are, our emptiness, our unhappiness, our aches, our pains, what we have not got, why the Lord does not do it, why He does not answer—we cannot worship the Lord.
But the moment we start to move out, forget ourselves and all that we are, negative and positive, and start to see the Lord and worship Him, a joy comes into our hearts, a peace comes into our hearts, and a new life is ministered to us. Somehow we start to live again.
I think it is the most wonderful thing in the Book that the last picture we ever get of Jacob is that he is worshipping. Did you notice that he is leaning on the top of his staff? That old dislocated hip is there with him to the end.
Somehow that dislocated hip is linked to his worship. He has become a worshipper because he has been crippled.
A worshipper. Some people tell me that they cannot worship.
When we have an open time of worship, very rarely do you hear people really worshipping. Most of us say a few things and then turn it to prayer almost immediately.
We say, “Lord, we thank You that You are here. Lord, we are glad that we are in Your presence. Now, Lord, will You please do this and this and this and this and this?”
We cannot help it. We are not worshippers; we are getters. We are acquirers.
In an open time of praise, sometimes many people cannot praise the Lord. Now, I know that openly praising the Lord is not necessarily worship, because worship is much deeper than even words.
Worship requires spiritual history. Worship requires spiritual experience. It means that you have gone somewhere with God. Out of that comes worship.
It is interesting that the Apostle Paul says this:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your spiritually intelligent worship.
There is the deepest level of worship, deeper than all words. It is the presenting of ourselves a living sacrifice to God. That is overcoming. That is overcoming.
It is not just a few words and our self-life left intact. We come and say, “Lord, You are wonderful,” and rush out with our self-life still intact. We feel a little bit better for the meeting, but we are not worshippers.
Sometimes the enemy comes when we come to this matter of praise and says, “Now then, you cannot praise Him.” We say, “No.” The enemy says to us, “You know why?” We say, “No. Why?”
He says, “Because you are not feeling good.” “Yes, of course. I feel terrible.”
The devil says, “You cannot praise the Lord when you are feeling terrible.” “Yes, of course not.”
Then the devil says, “You do not want to be a hypocrite, do you?” “No, there are enough of them, are there not?”
Then the devil says, “Well, you shut up. Do not praise the Lord, or you will be a hypocrite.” We say, “Yes, yes. There are enough hypocrites in the church. I am not going to open my mouth and say, ‘Lord, You are marvellous,’ praising when I am not feeling glorious. I want to be real. I want to be true.”
The devil says, “Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.”
You know, the enemy ties cord after cord—actually, they are chains, they are ropes—round and round and round us. You will find that you will never be able to praise the Lord, for it does not matter where you are or at what time: there will always be something that is not absolutely right, and you cannot praise the Lord.
Now, this is not worship. If worship is, “Lord, here I am. I feel marvellous. Lord, I feel wonderful. Here I am to praise You, Lord, because I feel so wonderful and marvellous,” well, thank God there are times when we do feel wonderful and marvellous. They are not too many.
When we do feel wonderful and marvellous, it is a marvellous thing. It is a blessed thing to feel wonderful and marvellous. But if the enemy can stop you from worshipping and praising the Lord, he will soon see to it that you never feel wonderful and marvellous.
He will do something to your indigestion. He will do something to your stomach, give you a little headache, cause the children to cry all night, cause your wife to be irritable, cause your husband to be short-tempered, or something will go wrong. There will always be a reason why you cannot worship the Lord, and the devil will see to it.
Then there will come a day when suddenly it will dawn on you: “I do not worship the Lord because of what I am or what I feel. I worship the Lord because of what He is.” That makes it—He never changes.
I like to be honest. I sometimes say, “Lord, I feel awful.” Some people feel they cannot say that to the Lord. They think it is a terrible thing to say to the Lord that you feel awful. But if you feel awful, why not say it?
Then say, “Lord, You are wonderful, and You never change. You are always the same. Your mercy is the same today as it was yesterday. Your grace is as great today as it was yesterday. I do not feel a thing, but thank You, Lord, for what You are.”
In fact, the greatest form of worship is that you do not even say anything about yourself at all. You just praise the Lord. There are so many things to praise the Lord for.
His throne has not collapsed because you got out of the wrong side of the bed. Some people think because they got out of the wrong side of the bed, have a headache, feel down or heavy, the whole of heaven has abdicated. There is a crisis in the government of heaven.
They are saying, “What shall we do? What shall we do? Lance has got up feeling awful.”
Do you honestly think that your aches or pains, or your little ups or downs, actually affect the government of heaven, the will of God, or the realisation of that purpose? No.
God is the same. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Lamb is on the throne forever. His name is above every name that is named—forever.
Oh, there are so many things to worship the Lord for. If you start to worship the Lord like this, you will start to think of all the things for which you can worship the Lord that have nothing to do with you.
Then you will start on His infinity, His greatness, His grace, truth, mercy, righteousness, His purpose, the destiny of the church, and a thousand and one things. You will feel quite different by the time you have been worshipping for a while. You will not know what has hit you.
You will come out and say, “Oh, that is funny. I got up the wrong side of the bed this morning, and I feel better for it.”
I will tell you another thing. Satan will be so upset that, in satanic headquarters, there will be a hurried meeting. The principality in charge of this whole region will bring in some smaller spirit and say to him, “Stop bothering Lance. God is getting more out of him when you bother him than when you do not bother him.”
“Cannot have that kind of worship. The man is going to worship like that? Why, he is going to be an overcomer in no time. Take away all the opposition now. Let him feel marvellous and wonderful. Let us see if we can undo him this way.”
No, you see, we all laugh about this, but Satan is not some simpleton. Some of you must have read C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. There is absolutely a revelation, in one sense, of what goes on.
The essential nature of this universe is spiritual, not physical. What really happens, happens in the unseen, and the visible is only the expression of those movements in the unseen.
Oh, to be a worshipper. God took a Jacob and He made him a worshipper.
It does not say, as it could say, “By faith Israel, when he was dying, blessed each of the two sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.”
For our comfort and our encouragement, it says, “By faith Jacob worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.” Are you a Jacob? Have you identified yourself with what I have been saying about Jacobs?
If you have, here is the encouragement: God, by His grace and by His power, will make you a worshipper.
There will be no one who ever comes to the throne of God who is not a worshipper. There will be no one in the great eternal government and administration of God who has not been made a worshipper in this life.
Every single position occupied in the eternal government and administration of the Lamb is occupied by a worshipper. Praise God.
We want to be those who worship in spirit and in truth. This does not mean there is no soul. Some people think it means no soul at all. It does not mean that at all.
Remember how Mary said in the Magnificat:
My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
Her spirit started the operation, and the soul got into the act. Do not be afraid of emotion in worship. When we rule out all emotion, our worship becomes artificial. It is not worship in spirit.
What does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth? It means that our worship is under the government of the Spirit of God.
Sometimes it is a good thing to kneel when we worship the Lord, because our bodies need to express something. Sometimes it is a good thing to lift up our hands.
I do not know why people are against lifting up their hands. It was the common way of praying until about the fifth century after Christ. But now everyone thinks, “Ooh! Lifting up your hands—charismatic.”
I would not bother two hoots that people call you charismatic, or anything else. They have always labelled us one thing or another. I have been labelled the most marvellous things. If I could tell you some of the things people have labelled me with—some things I do not even know of.
In fact, I have had an exciting time looking things up to find out what I am supposed to be. I do not bother too much.
I believe that the charismatic has really been a move of the Spirit of God, even though it has got excesses, extremes, imbalance, and so on. It has been the Spirit of God that has moved upon the face of the world.
Thank God for every single thing that He has brought to us, so that we may be open and go on together in that way.
Now there is something else about this matter. I can see our time has gone, as usual. He is not only a worshipper, but he is also a blessing.
By faith Jacob blessed each of the two sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
He blessed.
I have said once or twice during these times on Jacob that some of us are no blessing. We are nothing but a pall of death. We come into any meeting, and with us comes strain, tension, artifice, façade. We are not a blessing; we rob the people of God of a blessing.
We enter into a happy Christian home, and before long they have lost all their joy and peace because we are there. We enter into some little group, and before long the whole thing is ruined fast. We do not mean to do it. We cannot help it. We are Jacobs.
Jacob was not a blessing. He never gave a blessing; he stole a blessing. Most believers steal blessings to begin with. We cannot help it. It is this self-centredness. It is a spontaneous, automatic reaction of self-centredness: “We have got to have it.”
If we see people happy, we cannot bear it. “I am unhappy.” So we immediately say, “What about me?”
Now, if you say to some of these dear folks, “Well, you are so self-centred,” they are out. “I have left. God has led me to the group down the road.”
Normally speaking, Christians do not like straight speaking. We are all the same. We always say, “Be honest with me,” but very rarely can we take too much honesty.
Of course, I must say this: often people say, “I am going to tell you something because I believe I must speak truth in love,” and rarely is it in love. We often do get into that very bad habit.
But what about this matter of being a blessing? What is a blessing? The Hebrew word means happiness.
Some Christians seem to think being happy, or happiness, is superficial. I do not. This world has got enough misery in it without Christians being miserable and spreading a bit more.
To see some of our faces, you would never have thought we had found salvation. You would never have thought we had found the purpose for living. You would certainly never have thought we were on our way to the eternal kingdom.
You would never, ever have thought that God, in His grace, had got hold of us. We look like the back of a bus in mourning.
Jacob could not help it. He had to acquire, and acquire, and acquire, and acquire. I suppose it was a basic insecurity, really.
Normally, people do acquire things all through the years because of a basic insecurity. It has been the one thing that has made them feel a bit secure: to acquire and acquire and acquire and acquire.
Jacob came to Laban with nothing. Before he left, he had vast flocks. It was his way of security. He took both Laban’s daughters and most of his flocks, and then he felt a bit more secure. But then he found that he was not really secure—only on one level.
To be a blessing means we have got to become an Israel. When we become an Israel, it is not that our troubles end. As I said this morning, there was a Rachel to be buried. There was a Joseph to be lost.
There were sons and a daughter who swindled him, deceived him, manipulated things, and did the most terrible things, in which he saw only too clearly his own nature. But Jacob had become a blessing.
It says the most beautiful thing about Jacob. When he came to Shechem, it says all the area respected him. He was a blessing.
It says, “The fear of Jacob fell upon all the people,” and the word is respect. They saw that the Lord was with him. There was something about him.
This had not happened before. The fear of the Lord was not upon Uncle Laban when he swindled Jacob out of Rachel and gave him Leah instead.
No, but now something had happened. Jacob had become Israel; he had become a blessing. When a man is a blessing, people respect him.
There is no more beautiful picture in the Bible than when Jacob stands before Pharaoh, and Pharaoh is blessed by Jacob: the greatest potentate of antiquity blessed by this frail old man leaning on his staff with a dislocated hip.
He must have lifted up his one hand and blessed Pharaoh in the name of the God of Abraham and of Isaac. It was a real blessing. It was a real blessing. He imparted something.
He became a blessing to all those sons. Oh, how interesting it is to read Genesis 49. That was not some little, “Now, my dear boy, remember this thought and that thought and the other, and be like this and this and this.”
Here was spiritual discernment. Here was spiritual insight. This was almost the gifts of the Spirit before their day. He had a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge. He had faith over some of them. He had discernment of spirits over all of them.
It was a prophetic blessing.
You know, dear brothers and sisters, let us be realistic for a moment. What does it mean to be a blessing to one another?
It means that, at any given moment, the Lord can manifest Himself enough to another believer. Sometimes it can just come by an arm round the shoulder, by a few words that seem so commonplace but are prophetic.
It is not always in a meeting that a word comes which is obviously prophetic. Sometimes it comes in conversation. Someone is speaking to you, and they say something: “Do you know, I know that God is going to do this and this and this for you.”
Years afterwards we say, “Do you remember what you said? It was prophetic.”
Sometimes, in our fellowship with one another, someone is in great need. We have been praying for them, and we say, “You know, I wonder whether you should do this and this and this. Pray about it.” A word of wisdom.
Let us be practical about this matter. How are we a blessing to one another? Just by smiling at one another? Well, that is better than looking miserable, but that is not a very strong kind of imparting blessing, is it?
Do we say, “Praise the Lord,” and slap one another’s backs? I have had that done to me when I felt dreadful, and it only made me feel worse.
How do we get a blessing from another person? We get a blessing when the Lord is there in that person.
When the Lord is not only in them—there are some believers with whom I have to determine to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, because I find it very hard to find the Lord in them. But I have to determine.
What a wonderful thing it is when I do not have to determine. I see the Lord. Oh, the Lord comes through their eyes. The Lord comes through their lips. It is not just the word; it is the very presence. That is a blessing.
You know, we are meant to be a blessing to the children of God. We are meant to be a blessing to the unsaved world. We can even be a blessing for the government—an unsaved government—by our prayer, by our intercession, by our determining that the will of God shall be done in this nation in the secret place. We bless them.
Oh, that we learn to be a blessing. This is what overcoming means. This is what it is all about.
What a lovely thing it is that when Jacob was going to bless—well, leave that little cat; it is all right. I like Saint Francis of Assisi; he can come and have a word.
What a wonderful thing it was when Jacob blessed those two sons. Have you all read the story? I hope you have.
You know what he did? Dear old Joseph brought the two boys up towards Jacob, right up to him, and they came out from between his knees. They were little lads.
Jacob, blind like his dear old father Isaac, crossed over his hands.
Joseph was horrified. “Father,” he said, “Father, you have crossed over your hands.”
“I know, my boy, I know,” he said. “But the younger will be blessed more greatly than the elder.”
People always say about Isaac that he was such a godly man, never did a wrong thing in his life, except when he went down to Abimelech and said that his wife was his sister, same as his father had done before.
People always talk about the nobility of Abraham, the nobility of Isaac, and the wickedness and swindling nature of Jacob. But Jacob, actually, can at times be a good deal more noble.
He never went down into Egypt, not until the Lord told him to. He certainly never said anything about Leah being his half-sister.
You know, Isaac was a dear man of God, but he was ruled by sentimentality. He loved Esau.
Jacob must have known in his spirit God saying, “Jacob, cross over your hands. This younger boy is going to be the one.” He did what his father did not do.
His father knew that prophetic word when the boys were in their mother’s womb:
The elder shall serve the younger.
Why did Isaac not act on it? Even if it was a deception, why did he not say, when Esau was there, “I am sorry, I cannot give you the blessing of the firstborn. I have got to give it to Jacob”?
That would have undone Jacob’s deception, would it not? Think of it. He would have had to rush out, take everything off, and come back and say, “Here I am, Dad—Jacob.”
A blessing. All overcomers are always blessings. They always have something to give of the Lord.
Here is the last thing I want to say this evening, and I will say it as swiftly as I can. Will you notice it is by faith?
Perhaps some of you have wondered what on earth worshipping has to do with faith.
By faith Jacob blessed.
By faith Jacob worshipped.
Many of us are waiting for some great pulverising experience that will carry us into some place where we are automatically and spontaneously blessings to others. I want to tell you something: I have never known the exercise of a real gift apart from faith.
When people tell me that some great power comes upon them, they start to tremble, and then say, “I know it was God,” and they are one hundred per cent certain, I know that it is not the Lord.
I have seen more tragedies done by people laying hands on people and pronouncing things over them which they say they are one hundred per cent certain are God.
I have a very different experience. I have found that every time I have ever been used by God—in prophecy, in any other way, in ministry, or in help—I have been assailed by doubt.
“Is it You? Is it You? Is it the flesh? Is it the enemy?” Then, at last, I have to say, “Lord, I believe this is You.” Then I step forward in faith, and then it is God.
Satan never assails anything that is of himself. You do not think Satan is going to come to you when you have got something that has come from him and say, “Now, this is not of the Lord.” He is just going to say, “Carry on. Absolutely of God.”
Remember this when next it comes to opening your mouth in public in prayer or praise. When the enemy comes and says, “It is not in the Spirit, not in the Spirit. This is the flesh,” just say to the Lord, “Lord, is this the flesh or is it not?”
If it is still burning in your heart, then say, “Lord, I am going to go ahead in faith,” and you will find the Lord is with you. Others will be blessed, and you will be edified as well as they.
Faith. You know, we have a cultic idea of faith. This is very important, what I want to say on this.
We have a Christian Science kind of concept of faith, and it has spread right through Christian circles. What is it? It is this: faith is a natural thing.
What you do is screw up faith inside of yourself until you have got enough faith, and then, with enough faith, it happens.
But this is the idea of faith: somehow or other, it is the Christian Science idea of faith. “I have got a wound in my hand. No, I have not got a wound in my hand. No, no, no, no, no. My hand is whole.”
It reminds me of Winston Churchill in one of the Cabinet meetings in the war, when he said, “Is there a Christian Scientist here?” One of the admirals said, “Yes, sir, I am.” He said, “Well, would you exchange your seat with me? I am sitting in a draught.”
Our idea of faith is often just this kind of thing. It is an idea that somehow we can pump up faith inside of us until, in the moment we get enough faith, suddenly we are through the sound barrier—it has happened.
That is not faith. I want to tell you: Jesus said, “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed”—that is so small—“you can remove a mountain.”
We think we must have a mountain of faith to remove a mountain of difficulty. God says all you need is a grain of faith, and you can remove an Everest of difficulty.
What, then, is the point? The point is this: faith never removes a mountain; it is God who removes the mountain. So you do not need a lot of faith to link you with God. All you need is what God has given you. So use it. Use it.
Faith has got to be objective. Faith is not subjective. In other words, what I am saying is this: you have got to have a knowledge, an inward knowledge, that God is there. He is.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The purpose of God stands. The Word of God is true. When you have got that kind of faith, you do not have a lot of faith, but immediately you are there.
By faith Jacob blessed.
By faith Jacob worshipped.
There is no other way to become an overcomer than this.
Who is he that overcometh the world, save he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God?
What is it that overcometh the world? It is even our faith.
They overcame him, Satan, by the blood of the Lamb; by the word of their testimony, the expression of faith; and because they loved not their lives even unto death—the laying down of our lives through faith.
Shall we pray?
Father, we pray that Thou wilt indeed make every one of us in this place an overcomer by Thy grace and power.
Make us not only those who come to the throne, who reign with Thee now on this earth in spirit, but, Lord, make us worshippers, and make us a blessing to others—not only to Thy people, Lord, but to the world.
Lord, only Thou canst do this. We commit ourselves to Thee that, Lord, Thou take the action necessary to see that everyone who has a willing heart is brought to the place where, by Thy grace alone and through the finished work of the Lamb, they become overcomers.
To Him that overcame, we ask it in His precious name. Amen.
Could we end this time by singing 354, hopefully offering it as an individual prayer, because that is what it really is? Number 354. Can we stand?
The congregation begins to sing Hymn 354.