With my upbringing, when I hear those little bells, I want to genuflect out of my heart.
Yeah. Yeah.
I understand that, John.
Let’s read a few Scriptures, starting in the New Testament: 2 Timothy 4:7.
This is probably Paul’s last letter—the very last thing he wrote. In the concluding chapter, he says:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith:
henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give to me at that day; and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved His appearing.
Then, in Philippians 1, I’m just going to read verse 6, but I want to preface it by reading verse 3. This is Paul writing to the Philippians. He starts out by saying:
I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you.
And then, in verse 6:
Being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Then I’d like to go way back to the beginning, in Genesis 33, starting with verse 17. This is after Jacob had wrestled with the angel at Peniel, had met Esau, and then he and Esau went their separate ways.
And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him a house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth.
And Jacob came in peace to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan-aram; and encamped before the city.
And he bought the parcel of ground where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for a hundred pieces of money.
Then, if we skip over to Genesis 35:
And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, Who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we’re grateful that we’re in Your presence by the blood of Jesus Christ, and because we’re in Him, we’re fully accepted by You. Father, we come today wanting to see You. We don’t want a teaching; we want to see You.
We want You to reveal Yourself to our hearts, so that we can walk in this world as Your children. We want to see, this morning, Lord. We pray You’ll reveal to us the God of Jacob in all His glory. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
You know, last time I spoke, I kind of piggybacked on what Jerry Amon spoke, and I’m going to kind of do that again today because I’m a plagiarizer. No.
Because that thought’s been on my heart too, about finishing the course—not finishing the race. You know, there’s a difference. A course spans everything. It’s not like I’m running to win a race or anything; I’m running to finish.
It’s like, for some of us old geezers, if we go to a 10K run, we don’t run to win. We run to finish, because we’re old.
You know, I’m old now. When I was your guys’ age, I never thought of being a senior citizen. I mean, that was never in my thoughts. Like, “God, I wonder what it’s going to be like when I’m seventy?” Whoever thought of reaching seventy? We thought we’d be perennially in our twenties.
But here we are. As we come to these days, sometimes I’m not one who looks at myself as being a champion. I see all my flaws. I’m discouraged so much by who I am in my flesh. Sometimes you feel like, “When do I quit dragging him around?”
Yeah, I think it’s because maybe I’m getting old that I’m starting to think about finishing the course. And I look at Paul when he writes this: how could he so confidently say, “I have finished the course”?
That, to me, is just hard to fathom—to have so much confidence that he could say before Timothy, his disciple, and even before the Lord, “I finished the course.”
And then how could he say to the Philippians, “I’m confident that you’ll finish the course”? How could he say that? How could he say that with such confidence?
When Jerry was speaking, he talked about our being all in. I never see myself as being all in, because I say, “Oh, I know I’ll go so far. It’s my history. I go so far, and then I stop.” What hope is there for me?
How could Paul have the confidence to say, “Jim, I’m confident that He who began a good work will finish it in the day of Christ Jesus”? He doesn’t see me. But the one thing he does see—he sees his God.
Because in 2 Timothy 1:12, Paul says:
For I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day.
So this morning, I’d like to talk about one who finished the race. When I look at Paul, I think, “He’s just got a wonderful Christian walk.” But what hope is there for us who don’t have a wonderful Christian walk?
Just before I get into this, in my neighborhood, I like to sit out on my front porch in my rocking chair—old, you know. I’m looking at the trees here, and almost all the trees are perpendicular. The branches go out, but the trunks are perpendicular.
Well, in my neighborhood, I look out at Adam and Jamie’s house. They’re our neighbors, and they have two trees side by side. One is straight, with maybe a little slant, but it goes straight up. It’s wonderful.
Next to it, there’s another tree. It starts going like this, then the trunk goes this way, then it goes up this way, and starts to curve up. I marvel at it. How is that tree able to stand? Why is that tree like that? All the other trees are going straight up and down. What’s wrong with this tree?
Sometimes I think, because all plants go toward the light, right? What causes this tree to do all this squiggly stuff? I think it was overshadowed by the other tree growing, so it was trying to get to the light. It formed this way, then leaned that way, and formed that way.
But the whole thing is, it’s as tall as the other tree. They’re side by side. The interesting thing is, that’s the one I’m drawn to artistically. There’s an artistic bent in me. If I was drawing, it’s boring to draw things straight up and down, but you give something shape, and it’s almost like, “Oh, that’s got character.”
The whole thing is, it’s right alongside one that’s growing straight and dull, and it’s reaching the same height. Its top branches are even with the top branches of the other tree, and it just makes me marvel.
Because when I think of our Christian life, how I wish my Christian life was like that perpendicular tree. I just wish it was like that. We always wish we’d have that meeting with the Lord that changes us forever, and that we never fall again.
I don’t know about you, but that’s me. When am I going to have that “aha” moment? But when I look at this tree, this tree had several “aha” moments. They shaped it, but it still reaches the sunlight. How did that happen?
So when I want to look at finishing the course, I don’t want to look at Paul. As great as he is, he’s a wonderful man in Christ, but he’s too perfect for me. I don’t want to look at Moses, or Abraham, or David. They’re the same way.
So God gave us one for us who feel we just make it. He gave us Jacob.
God, over and over—more than any other name—goes by the God of Jacob.
My daughter Jamie and I were talking last night as we were waiting for the baby to go to sleep. She asked, “What are you speaking on?” I said, “I’m going to speak on Jacob.”
“Why Jacob?” she said. “There’s nothing lovable in him. Compared to Abraham, where’s his faith? I don’t see anything in Jacob.”
We were fellowshipping, and I said, “You know, maybe that’s why God is called the God of Jacob—because there’s nothing lovely in him, and yet he’s redeemed.”
You look at my favorite verses in Isaiah 43:
I have called thee by thy name, thou art Mine.
I have redeemed thee.
Isn’t it wonderful to think that He redeems the unlovely? He doesn’t just redeem a Paul, or a Peter, or an Abraham. He redeemed Jacob.
So I’d like to speak concerning finishing the course through Jacob. Something Mac said last time caught me. He used a quote from T. Austin-Sparks about being an overcomer.
Being an overcomer isn’t that we’re so strong and mighty. It’s just that, at the end, we find ourselves in the will of God. To me, that was just a wonderful saying.
It doesn’t matter where you started or where you got hung up. In the end, if you’re in the will of God, you’ve overcome. You’ve overcome by God, because God has brought you into His will.
I think when we come to the end, we find the same thing with Jacob. Jacob, at the end—we come here to Genesis 33—Jacob is not in the will of God. He’s called back to Bethel, but he’s in Shechem. He’s going everywhere else, but he’s not going to the place where he’s supposed to be.
He’s out of the will of God. But it’s wonderful to know that it’s not Jacob’s trying, or even his disobedience. There’s something about God, Who is faithful—faithful to the one He calls.
It’s not just that we’re faithful to His call, because we fall. But isn’t it wonderful that the God of Jacob is faithful to what He called and what He has purposed?
I remember David Pegg gave us a little timeline the last time we had our conference. He showed how, after the exile, the things of Israel were going down, but the purpose of God remained constant.
The whole thing is, God never changes. We change all the time, but God doesn’t. He’s faithful. He’s faithful all the way through.
That’s why Paul is confident for other people: because he says, “I know my God. I know my God.”
Now, that’s not to say, “Oh, okay, well, I can just relax because God is faithful in keeping His thing.” He always looks for a response from us. But it’s a response at that moment that He calls us.
A lot of times we respond to things, and He’s not really calling us. I remember one time Jerry and I were in a prison ministry God had never called us into. It was miserable.
I don’t think one person got saved, and it was miserable. We hated going to it. God didn’t call us to do it. If we had been called to do that, do you think there would have been no conversions? No, because He would have called us, and He would have been doing His work.
But He had never called us to do that. It was His way of saying, “I didn’t call you to do that. I called you for something else.”
Jacob is like Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress. He comes in, gets the promise from the Lord—“I’m giving you the blessings of Abraham”—and then he goes up to Paddan-aram with Laban.
Like Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress, he gets through the wicket gate, and then he comes to all sorts of crossroads in his life. He winds up going down some wrong roads. He goes up the Hill of Legality. He goes on a road that leads into Vanity Fair. All these things happen to him and slow him up from getting to the Celestial City.
The Celestial City is his goal; it’s his purpose. He wants to get there, but he takes side roads here and there. Does that mean, because he takes a side road, he doesn’t get there? No, because there’s Someone watching over him.
There’s Someone saying, “I paid so much for you. I cannot let you wander around forever. I must bring you to Myself because of the price I paid for you.”
“The price I paid for you wasn’t gold and silver. It was the precious blood of My Son. I cannot turn My back on that. I cannot ever say to you, ‘You are a lost cause.’”
No. He can only say to us, “Because of My Son, you are My beloved, and I cannot turn My back.”
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee.
That’s the word of the Lord to Israel. Israel? Israel is the name that was given to Jacob.
As we go through our lives, life doesn’t always turn out like we planned it to turn out. We go different paths. We’re taken different ways. Sometimes we find ourselves imprisoned by our own wandering away, and the Lord has to break us out of those prisons.
Sometimes we find ourselves caught in the world. We find the same with Jacob. Jacob wants to settle down. He builds himself a house and booths. He likes the wealth of the world. He comes to Shechem. He wants the culture of the world.
And all through this, the Lord isn’t condemning him or anything. He’s waiting for him. He’s waiting for him. He’s waiting for me.
I think in Succoth he just got tired. He said, “You know something? This just isn’t making it. I don’t even know why I set up these booths for these cattle. Let’s get out of here.”
He goes to Shechem, and he’s compromising the whole purpose of God. “Marry my daughter off, and we’ll marry your daughters,” and everything like that. Thank God for his unruly sons, who say, “Well, not until you’re circumcised will we give our daughter to you.” Then, when they do it, they murder them.
It’s amazing that we’d say, “Thank God they murdered them.” But here it is. Finally, God speaks to him.
I want to make this point clear: God spoke to him where he was. He didn’t have to come out of something for God to speak to him. God spoke to him right where he was.
It was responding to God that brought him out of where he was. This is the wonderful thing about our God: God speaks to us where we are.
We know that when we got converted, but how many times have we known it in our Christian walk? God speaks to us where we are. He doesn’t say, “You need to fix this, and then we’ll talk.” He comes to us where we are.
He comes to Jacob where he is. Notice what He says to him in Genesis 35:1: “Arise.” Or, in other words, “Get up. Just get up.”
It’s like the paralytic in John 5, who had been there thirty-eight years. “Do you want to be made whole?” You kind of think, “Well, that’s a stupid question.” Do you want to be made whole?
Then we give our excuses. “Well, no one’s here to do this,” or, “If it wasn’t for this, it wasn’t for that.” The Lord Jesus listens, but then He interrupts him and says, “Arise, take up thy bed, and walk.”
That’s what He says to Jacob: “Arise. Take up your bed and go home. Your home is Bethel. That’s where I want you. I want you to go up to Bethel, live there, and build an altar.”
He had just built an altar in Shechem. He called it after himself, El-elohe-Israel, “God, the God of Israel.” But God said, “I’m not satisfied with that altar. That’s not the altar I’m seeking. I’m seeking something else.”
When the Lord starts with Jacob in Genesis 35, He doesn’t say, “Okay, Jacob, that was just warm-ups. I’m going to give you a do-over.” God doesn’t give do-overs. He picks us up where we are.
There are consequences to things that sometimes we have to face. He doesn’t wash away the consequences of sin; He washes away the penalty.
For example, Tex Watson committed murders and got saved while he was in prison. But did that mean he was absolved of the crime he committed? No. He’s serving a life sentence without parole. There’s a consequence to that sin.
But will we see him in glory? Amen. We’re going to see this one changed by Christ.
So He says, “Arise. Don’t bemoan where you’re at. I’m not asking you to regret. I’m not calling you to do that. I’m calling you to come home.”
It’s like the prodigal who comes home: “I’ve done this,” and the father almost doesn’t hear the rest of it.
Here with Jacob, God says, “Don’t bemoan the fact of where you’re at. I know you’re there, and I know why you’re there. I’m not dealing with that. I’m dealing with you. You, get up. Come to Bethel and live there. Make an altar to Me there.”
Now, why Bethel? This is the first step of finishing the course. We get sidetracked, and then we get back on course.
Why Bethel? Bethel was the place where Jacob had his first revelation. It’s not to say, “Oh, go back and relive something.” We can never relive something. We should just mark that—X that out. You’re never going to relive an experience, so don’t torture yourself trying to get it back.
There’s no use in it, and God doesn’t want that. He doesn’t say, “Oh, I want you to live in this experience forever.” No. He says, “This is the start of an experience, and then there are others as you go on and on.”
“I don’t want you to relive an experience. It’s not the experience that it’s about; it’s Me. I want you to come to Me—the One that I revealed to you that I am.”
“I don’t want you to come to the experience of the ladder and all that kind of stuff, trying to re-dream a dream. I just want you to come to Me. I’ve already done that other thing. Now come back to Me, and we’ll start from this point here. When you come back to Me, we’ll go further.”
So he goes back, and he’s renewed as far as his relationship with God. That’s the key. The relationship is renewed—not the experience. The relationship is renewed.
His building of an altar was, for him, a new consecration. Jacob was already sanctified. God had already set him apart for His purposes. That wasn’t the question. Consecration was the question.
His consecration went so far the first time as saying, “Well, if I go out and You bring me back with clothes, food, and everything, then You’ll be my God, and I’ll give You ten percent.”
Hey, we laugh and snicker at Jacob. God didn’t. He said, “Okay, I’ll take you on that. I’m going to bring you back here.” And He did. He brought him back.
The first time Jacob raised up a pillar. This time he makes an altar. I think there’s a big difference. A pillar is like a monument. An altar is for sacrifice. At an altar, something is committed. Something of self is committed.
God also reminded Jacob of who he was. If we look at Genesis 35:9–12:
And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him.
And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and He called his name Israel.
And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;
and the land which I gave unto Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.
That’s very interesting, because at Peniel, that’s where he was renamed. That was in Genesis 32. But from Genesis 32 to Genesis 35, he’s never called Israel—except by himself, when he made an altar to the God of Israel.
But otherwise, it’s all Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob. So God reminds him, “You’re not Jacob. I made you Israel. Israel shall be your name.”
Here we have God renewing. Jacob is renewing a relationship; God is renewing His promise. “My promise has never changed, Jacob. You have, but that’s okay.”
“I want you to know that I call you Israel, and you’re Mine. The blessings I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I give to you. You don’t have to manipulate Me for them. I freely give them to you. They’re yours, from Me.”
He reminds him of his standing before God and men, because his family now will be known as Israel.
There’s also a new thing that came out of this. God revealed something more of Himself to Jacob that He had never revealed before.
The first time Jacob went to Bethel, when God introduced Himself, He said, “I am the God of your fathers.” He left it there. To me, that’s so telling of where Jacob was.
Was God his God? “Well, I thought he wanted the birthright. I thought he wanted the blessing.” Well, can I have that without knowing the God of my fathers? He’s the God of my fathers. I want the blessing of my fathers. I don’t know if I want the God of my fathers, but I want the blessing. I want the birthright. I want the position.
So God now comes to him. He begins with Abraham, but then He says, “I am God Almighty.” He says, “This is Who I am.”
“Now, you’ve known Me only as the God of your fathers. I’m going to let you know personally Who I am. I’m not just the God of your fathers. I’m God Almighty. There is no one greater than Me.”
Really, this is the key to finishing the course: knowing Who our God is. Paul knew, and he could pray for us with confidence, but we have to be brought to that same place where we can say, “I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded.”
Just because this happened, Jacob could say, “It’s God Almighty that appeared to me. It’s God Almighty Who has given me a new name and a new nature. It’s God Almighty Who conferred His promises on me.”
But we still have to go on from that place. We live our lives. That is a meeting place where we meet the Lord, and now we live out from that meeting. I don’t want to say from that experience; we live from that encounter with the Lord.
So what is Bethel for him? It is this encounter with God where he finds out Who He is. “God has shown me that He’s God Almighty. He has spoken that word to me. He’s told me personally.”
Bethel isn’t some geographical place—like, “Stay at 4424, because that’s where I am. I’m only at 4424, so you need to stay here.”
No, because in the rest of Genesis 35, Jacob goes to Ephrath, and then he winds up at the oak of Mamre in Hebron. So he doesn’t stay in Bethel.
I thought God said, “Stay at Bethel. Live in Bethel.” No, He’s not saying, “Live in the geographical thing.” He’s saying, “Live in what I’ve shown you of Who I am. I want you to live out from that. I want you to live in the reality of that.”
Then the course picks up from there. We want to spiritualize everything, but not everything can be spiritualized, because life is life. Life happens. Things happen that we never expected.
People have asked me, when I went back to give Katie lunch one time at the school where I used to work, “How is retirement treating you?” Well, it hasn’t turned out like I planned.
Things happened. Things happened that changed the course I wanted to go. I wanted that nice, easy life, but it didn’t happen that way. Shadows overcame me. Things happened that we weren’t expecting.
Some things happen that you did expect, and you were prepared for them. Other things happen that you didn’t expect, and you weren’t prepared for them. So you’ve got that tree going this way and that way and this way, but it’s still reaching up.
When you look at Jacob’s life, this revelation—this encounter with God—everything is tested, because it has to be proved. When I say it has to be proved, I mean that God wants to show you this is true about Him.
It’s not that we’re trying to prove God, although we do prove Him when we have faith. We prove that He’s faithful. But He’s proving to us that He is Who He is. He’s the Almighty God. He’s the God Who calls into being that which was not.
What happens to Jacob? Life continues. In Genesis 35, Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, dies. You may say, “Oh, big deal. She’s an old lady. She’s bound to die, right?”
But to Jacob, Deborah was his last touch with his mother. He had never had a touch with his mother after he left to go to Uncle Laban’s. He never saw her again.
This nurse was precious to him. She was a reminder of his mother. When she smiled at him, it was his mother smiling at him. Now she dies. As expected, this was going to happen, but does that mean it doesn’t hurt?
So his life must go on without that.
Then, unexpectedly, Rachel dies. She dies in childbirth. Nobody expected that. She’s just having a baby, and yet she dies in childbirth.
His love for Rachel was his most precious thing. Remember, seven years seemed like a few days because his love for Rachel was so great. Here he has this thing happen, and he still has to go on. Life goes on.
But he has Benjamin to take her place as a reminder, just like Deborah was a reminder of Rebekah. Benjamin was a reminder of Rachel, and he could take joy in that.
Then Isaac died, the one who inherited everything from Abraham and passed it on to Jacob. Of course, it was expected that he would die. But now, for the first time, Jacob could say, “Dad, I found what you found.” And his dad passes away.
Then his kids are a mess. Those kids are just a mess.
Levi and Simeon are thugs. Reuben—I don’t want to say womanizer, because that’s not what he is—but he takes forbidden fruit. He’s a sensual man.
And Judah—what a deceiving man. A guy who won’t give what’s due to his daughter-in-law, and then goes in to a harlot. What kind of— And then Dinah. Dinah, she just—girls just want to have fun, right?
What a mess.
To top that off, his sons sell Joseph into slavery and then lie to him. Great, great family. Comes from great stock.
This is unforeseen. Now he’s brokenhearted about the son he’s lost. For the first time, Jacob finds that he’s really unable and insufficient to deal with the circumstances of life.
He can’t manipulate Joseph back. He can’t do any of these things. He is, for the first time, finding himself unable to manipulate—unable and insufficient to deal with the circumstances of life.
If this wasn’t enough, at the end of Genesis 42, there’s a famine. Now he’s running out of food. Again, this is life.
We want to say, “Well, God’s orchestrating all these things.” Well, God foresaw these things. We want to make it so that God’s orchestrating everything, almost like it’s fate.
God lets life happen, and then He comes into the circumstances of life and works good. That’s what it is.
That’s what Joseph said: “You meant it for evil.” That was you. “But God turned it to good.” God allowed these things that happened for good. His plan is greater than yours.
The famine continues. He sends his kids down, and we know the story. Joseph recognizes them and says, “I’m keeping Simeon until you bring back your other brother.”
They go back with the food, find their money in their sacks, and tell their dad, “If we need food again, we have to bring Benjamin.” Jacob blows a gasket.
If this wasn’t enough, he comes up with this statement: “All these things are against me.”
Brothers and sisters, I think this is where I get defeated all the time. I look around, and it’s not that I’m looking only at circumstances, but I look at my life in general, at the man I am in the flesh, and I say, “Oh, this is against me.”
“How can I ever please God? How can I ever do that? I’m so dyed-in-the-wool sinful. I’m so full of self. How can that ever be crucified in me? I cannot see it. All this is against me.”
Where is the God of Bethel? We find ourselves crying that.
In Genesis 43, we come into another wrestling. You didn’t know that Jacob wrestled twice, did you? He did. But this wrestling wasn’t like the one at Peniel.
At Peniel, it lasted for a night. This lasted for a year. Between Genesis 42 and Genesis 43, between the first going down in the famine and the next one, it was always in the back of his mind: “I’m going to have to give up Benjamin if I want more food.”
“If this famine continues this way, I’m going to have to give up Benjamin. I cannot bring myself to it.” For a year.
Until the sons finally come and say, “Dad, we need food. If we go and you don’t send Benjamin, we are not getting food. We’re all going to starve to death.” And there goes the purpose of God.
Of course, they didn’t say, “There goes the purpose of God.”
But there’s a difference in this wrestling. At Peniel, God conferred on him the name Israel. In this wrestling, the name Israel is confirmed.
If you look at Genesis 43, not once is the name Jacob used. It’s all Israel. Something happened. Something happened in this wrestling.
There wasn’t some revelation that he had or anything. This wrestling over time eroded that self from him.
His concern for keeping his family alive became greater than his concern for himself. Because of that, he gave up Benjamin.
Listen to his prayer in Genesis 43:11: “If it must be so.” If I have to give up Benjamin, if it must be so, then do this.
In other words, he’s submitting to giving this up. This is Jacob’s Gethsemane, if I can be—not bold, but reverent. For him, this was Gethsemane.
“If I must do this, then let this go along. And if I am bereaved—if I don’t get Benjamin back—then I am bereaved.”
I don’t think he said this weeping. I think he said this submissively: “If this is the way it is, Lord, this is the way it is. I bow to it.”
There’s a resigning of his will to Another. Israel is the one who lets go. He’s not the grasper that Jacob is.
Notice: he doesn’t ask for deliverance. He doesn’t ask for blessing. He says this in Genesis 43:14:
And God Almighty give you mercy before the man.
His prayer is for mercy. It’s another change from Jacob to Israel. He’s not after, “Oh, Lord, bless me,” or, “Oh, Lord, deliver me from this.” His prayer is, “Let me know Your mercy in this.”
Remember, mercy is undeserved. Nobody deserves mercy. It’s the kindness of the giver that gives mercy.
Here we have Jacob saying, “May God give you mercy.” He simply returns the money in the sack, saying, “Maybe it’s an oversight.”
You remember when he was trying to placate Esau: he sent all these droves of animals ahead, one after the other, and he bowed seven times. You don’t have this now.
He just says, “Here, give him this. Take this gift.” This gift was just a normal gift, like when you go over to somebody’s house to eat and bring a gift with you. It was nothing elaborate.
It was simply saying, “We appreciate your suffering with us, and just in case of an oversight, take this back.” So he does nothing beyond that to try to manipulate by his own self.
He commits everything to whom? God Almighty.
All of a sudden—and this is the key—it’s not the seeing; it’s the having seen that we trust. There’s a big difference.
We want to see. We want visions. We want higher knowledge, higher truths. So we get them. But the question is: is the higher truth worked out in our life?
Is the higher truth about what we find out about the Lord made into trust? Because that’s what the Lord is after.
The Lord doesn’t want you just to be knowledgeable. He says, “I’ve shown you Who I am. Now, as you go into the world, will you trust Me for Who I am?”
“Will you trust Me that I have your good at heart? Will you trust Me that I know where you are, and I know what I’m doing, and that I have good things in store? Will you trust Me for that?”
That’s what the Lord wants.
How does Jacob end? Well, I don’t want to go to Genesis; I want to go to Hebrews 11.
Hebrews 11:21 says:
By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
Now, if you’ll notice in your Bibles, the word leaning is in italics, which means it’s really not there in translation. So why did they put it there?
Well, let’s read it without leaning: “And Jacob worshiped on top of his staff.” That’s really awkward. I’d like to see somebody on top of a staff worshiping. It would probably be an act in a circus.
So this made sense, because what else do you do with a staff? You use it to lean on.
Moses had a staff. Shepherds have staffs. My father-in-law is ninety-four. He’s just started to use a cane, and he doesn’t use it right. It’s an ornament.
He doesn’t know how to use it, because when you use a cane, it’s to help you balance. You have to put your weight on it. It has to be in step with you. If it’s not in step with you, you’re awkward.
To lean is like saying, “I can put my weight on this. One hundred ninety-six pounds, and I’m not fearful that this is going to fall. I trust that this is strong enough to hold me.”
To lean is to cast one’s whole weight upon.
Who was Jacob’s staff?
God Almighty.
Jacob learned to lean on a staff. Because he learned to lean on the staff, he could worship. He was no longer worried about himself, because he was leaning on One Who was able to take the full weight of who he was.
Mac talked about us as overcomers last week. God is the true Overcomer. God overcomes us in our lives.
It’s not that we need to overcome circumstances. I think the first thing that has to be overcome is us.
And not overcome by messages or circumstances, but by God Himself—God showing us that He is greater than we are.
I think that’s the hardest lesson for any Christian to learn, because we so often want to fix ourselves. Like Jesus said, “Physician, heal thyself.” Sometimes I think, when we get saved, we feel that’s what the Lord says to us: “Now, physician, heal yourself.”
He never says that. That’s not His nature. His nature is to save.
Here we have Jacob, who had found for himself, “Oh, God, I can lean on You. Even if I’m bereaved, I can lean on You. You’re my staff.”
It’s wonderful to know that He is able to do that. In closing, I just want to say this: there were seven years of famine. Seven is the number of completion.
I don’t want to spiritualize it, but I want to take it beyond that. Remember, Peter asked, “How many times must I forgive my brother if he sins against me? Seven times?” Well, that’s complete, right? Complete forgiveness.
The Lord said, “No, seventy times seven.” What does that mean to us? God will complete it. It doesn’t matter how long it takes.
Our brother shared about creation this morning at the table. After seven days, God rested. Then man fell, and God began a new work—a work of redemption.
How long will that last? Till it’s complete. That’s when the Lord will come back. It will take as long as it takes to complete, because God will do it.
That’s why Paul has confidence in God. He knows that God is not constrained by time. He doesn’t have to worry about the Philippians: “Oh, they only have so much time before this happens,” or, “They only have so much time that I’m going to be with them.”
He did that, remember, when he was with the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20. What did he do? He said, “I commend you to God and to the word of His grace.”
“I commend you to God.” Isn’t that the place where we want to be? Commended to God.
That’s what the Lord Jesus has done. When He died, He said, “Into Thy hands I commit My spirit.” Now that He’s risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of God, what is He doing there?
He’s commending us to the Father. “Father, work Your salvation. Bring about the end of Your salvation.”
The song of Wesley says, “Finish, then, Thy new creation.” That’s what the Lord is praying right now. He’s saying, “Father, finish Your new creation. Bring it about in Your time.”
He’s confident in praying that, and He can say, “Amen. So be it.”
Brothers and sisters, that’s for us. Are you wondering, “Am I going to make it through?”
In God, you are. In Christ, you are. Be in Christ. Remain in Christ. Abide in Christ. Let Christ be your salvation, and rest.
It is a wonderful thing to enter God’s Sabbath rest—to know that He’s the Creator. There’s nothing I can do except to lean on my staff and worship Him Who is able to do all, because He’s Almighty.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You that it’s not that You don’t give up on us; it’s that You so value Your Son that You won’t give up on anything He has won for You.
Lord, we praise Your Son, the Lord Jesus, Who has given us to You—Who has given us at great cost—but has given us to You, and we’re Yours.
O Lord, we put ourselves in Your hand. We pray, Lord, that You would show us Yourself afresh. Recover us, renew us, Lord, where we’ve fallen, where we’re at, and bring us forward from there.
Lord, we thank You that You’re able to finish the work, that You’re able, Lord, to perfect us until the day of Christ Jesus.
So we commit ourselves into Your hand for that perfecting, that You might be glorified, because You’re worthy of glory and honor and praise.
We give You our thanks and our love—to You, Who art our Almighty God, higher than any other. We worship You, and we bow to You, in Jesus’ name.