This morning, will you turn with me to
Genesis chapter 33.
We continue our series of studies in the
book of Genesis and particularly now in the
life of Jacob.
In the last of the installments in the
story of the life of Jacob, remember, he
has been called back to the land from
Haran and on the way, he has wrestled
with the angel, been defeated by the angel,
has begun to cling to the angel and
received a blessing from the angel who turns
out to be another of the pre-incarnate
appearances of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And now in verse, or in chapter 33
in verse 1, Jacob is on the way,
he knows that Esau is before him and
remember that the last time he saw Esau
was considerably, a considerable number of years previously,
but Esau had said that if he could
get his hands on Jacob, he would wring
his neck or he would kill him in
his own particular way.
So Jacob is a little bit anxious about
this meeting with Esau.
Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked and
behold, Esau was coming and 400 men with
him.
So he divided the children among Leah and
Rachel and the two maids and he put
the maids and their children in front and
Leah and her children next and Rachel and
Joseph last.
It's obvious where his affections lie.
They lie with Rachel and with Rachel's son
Joseph.
But he himself passed on ahead of them
and bowed down to the ground seven times
until he came near to his brother.
Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced
him and fell on his neck and kissed
him and they wept.
And he lifted his eyes and saw the
women and the children and said, who are
these with you?
So he said, that is Jacob, the children
whom God has graciously given your servant.
Then the maids came near with their children
and they bowed down and Leah likewise came
near with her children and they bowed down
and afterward Joseph came near with Rachel and
they bowed down.
And he said, what do you mean by
all this company which I have met?
And he said, that is Jacob, to find
favor in the sight of my Lord.
But Esau said, I have plenty, my brother.
Let what you have be your own.
And Jacob said, no, please, if now I
have found favor in your sight, then take
my present from my hand, for I see
your face as one sees the face of
God and you have received me favorably.
I think what is meant by that is
that Jacob is simply saying that he sees
a reflection of the favor that God has
shown him in the friendliness that Esau has
manifested in seeing Jacob.
Verse 11, please take my gift which has
been brought to you because God has dealt
graciously with me and because I have plenty.
Thus he urged him and he took it.
Now Jacob was particularly interested that Esau would
accept this gift of over 500 animals which
had been sent forward because he was in
the east.
If one took a gift, that was the
assurance that the relationship had been reestablished.
And so he was anxious to see that
that was reestablished.
Then Esau said, let us take our journey
and go and I will go before you.
But he said to him, my Lord knows
that the children are frail and the flocks
and herds which are nursing are a care
to me.
And if they are driven hard one day,
all the flocks will die.
Now that sounds as if it's very wise
on Jacob's part, but as we see, as
we shall see, he is playing the hypocrite.
Please let my Lord pass on before his
servant and I will proceed at my leisure
according to the pace of the cattle that
are before me and according to the pace
of the children until I come to my
Lord at Seir.
Now Seir was down to the southeast and
that was where apparently Esau was living at
this time.
Disturbance in the nursery.
And Esau said, please let me leave with
you some of the people who are with
me.
But he said, what need is there?
Let me find favor in the sight of
my Lord.
So Esau returned that day on his way
to Seir and Jacob journeyed to Succoth and
built for himself a house and made booths
for his livestock.
Therefore, the place is named Succoth.
Now Jacob came safely to the city of
Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan.
When he came from Paternarum and camped before
the city, notice those expressions, which describe the
pattern of Jacob's existence at this time.
And he bought the piece of land where
he had pitched his tent from the hands
of, hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem's
father, for one hundred pieces of money.
Then he erected there an altar and called
it El, Eloi Israel.
May the Lord bless this reading of his
word.
When Israel or Jacob wrestled with the angel
at Panal and finally lost the struggle, he
asked of the angel, what is your name?
Well, the angel asked of him, what is
your name?
And he said, Jacob.
And then he said, your name shall no
longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have
striven with God and with men and have
prevailed.
Now that name, Israel, for many years was
thought by most Bible scholars to mean simply
a prince with God, because the word for
prince is very closely related to the name
Israel.
Most of the Bible scholars today believe that
that's not quite right.
That really the name Israel means something like
God's fighter, or perhaps, may God fight for
him.
Well, the subject this morning, as we turn
to Genesis chapter 33, is after Panal, or
God's fighter, retreating.
Panal is an epoch in the life of
Jacob.
He reaches a new level of experience in
the struggling with the angel, and particularly as
he realizes that the person with whom he's
struggling is God himself.
For he says afterwards, I have seen God
face to face, yet my life has been
preserved.
He fought with that unknown person who came
to him, thinking perhaps that he was a
representative of Esau, since Esau was coming with
400 armed men.
And they struggled in the beginning of the
night, and struggled through the night, and there
seemed to be no way for each one
of them to make headway against the other
one, until finally this individual with whom he
was wrestling, who evidently possessed an awesome reserve
of strength, as I mentioned in the last
message two weeks ago, touched Jacob's hip, and
immediately it was dislocated and out of joint.
And Jacob realized at that time that the
person with whom he was wrestling was not
after all a man, but a supernatural being.
Now Hosea tells us that he wept and
sought his favor.
So evidently when Jacob realized what was happening,
and that he was really not wrestling with
a man, but with a superhuman being, instead
of wrestling with him, he began to cling
to him, and to weep, and to seek
the favor of this person with whom he
had been struggling.
That is a beautiful picture of the posture
of power in spiritual things.
Clinging, weeping, and seeking the favor of our
great God.
And so the defeat which Jacob experienced really
became a victory, because in the defeat he
was defeated, but in the victory of the
divine being, Jacob found his real victory, because
he had learned to cling.
And he's given the new name of God's
fighter, or may God strive for him.
That was a great high, it was a
great high point in the life of Jacob
to this point.
But it's one thing to attain to a
great level of spiritual experience, and it's another
to keep it.
They are not the same thing.
And so Jacob had reached a high level
of spiritual experience, he's actually wrestled with God,
he's come to see him face to face,
and furthermore God has blessed him and given
him a new name, God's fighter.
But it doesn't take anything but Esau to
change Jacob from clinging to cringing.
And so he's cringing again in Genesis chapter
33.
Now that's indicated by the use of the
name Israel through the rest of this book.
It illustrates for us the fact that Jacob
is a person who is up and down
and up and down, even after this great
experience.
Now in the case of Abraham, if you
read the story of Abraham, he was called
Abram.
But when God changed his name to Abraham
in the record itself, you will find that
it's Abraham, Abraham, Abraham, generally speaking thereafter.
I think maybe in the case of Abraham
entirely thereafter.
And when Saul becomes Paul in the experience
as set forth in the book of Acts,
after which you read Paul, and rarely if
ever do you read the old name appearing.
In the case of Simon Peter, the Simon
which means weak, who has become Peter the
rock, almost altogether thereafter Peter becomes predominant in
the reference to the names of the two.
But if you read the rest of the
book of Genesis, you will find that forty
-five times after this Jacob appears as Jacob.
And only twenty-three times as Israel thereafter.
And even in the use of the names
you can see that Jacob while he has
this great experience and he's reached this high
plateau, that night of Panal, that afterwards he
falls away from it quite often.
And the cost of this is seen in
chapter thirty-four, the chapter we shall consider
next week, the Lord willing.
Because the cost of falling away from the
Lord and the cost of drifting back toward
the world and camping toward the cities of
the world is rape, treachery, massacre, and reproach
upon the name of God.
Unequal partnerships in life lead to disaster.
And Jacob unfortunately had to learn it by
experience.
So the chief lesson then of chapter thirty
-three as we shall see is the danger
of degeneration in the Christian life.
We're not suggesting of course that Jacob was
not a believer.
He was a believer.
And we're not suggesting that a person once
having attained to a spiritual experience may fall
away and be lost.
We're not talking about the fact that he
is no longer a believer.
But it is possible for believers to degenerate
in their Christian experience.
And Jacob begins the path that leads to
that in chapter thirty-three.
There is one other great lesson that one
sees in chapter thirty-three and that's the
lesson that is found in the meeting of
Jacob and Esau again.
It's kind of a classic of reconciliation.
And as a matter of fact, one of
the rather unusual things about this experience, that
when these two brothers met after they had
been separated for these many years on Esau,
we read, ran forward, embraced Jacob, fell on
his neck and kissed him.
The Lord Jesus, when he constructed the parable
of the prodigal son, speaking of the prodigal
who went into the far country, finally came
to himself, decided he would go back to
his father.
And in Luke chapter fifteen, I think it's
about verse twenty, as the Lord tells the
story of the father, who is Jesus Christ's
picture of God.
As the father looks down the road and
sees the son coming after many years of
separation from the father, he picks up his
garments, his long lengthy garments, and in a
very undignified way it might seem, but it's
the dignity of a merciful God who loves,
he races down the road, meets his son
returning, falls upon his neck and begins to
kiss him.
It's as almost as if our Lord has
borrowed from this very chapter the words by
which to describe that meeting, the classic meeting
of reconciliation.
It's a beautiful lesson, it's a beautiful illustration,
and we have it here in Genesis chapter
thirty-three.
Of course there are other lessons here, but
we want to concentrate on the principal one.
There are the lessons such as the power
of kindness in our relationships one with another.
There is the lesson of the wisdom of
taking God along with us on our trips,
and while Jacob falls backward, nevertheless in the
midst of the experiences of life, he does
recognize that God is with him.
And of course it illustrates the duties of
remembering the mercy of God to us, and
Jacob does, in spite of his failure, remember
the blessings of the Lord to him.
But preeminently it's the story of the danger
of degeneration in the Christian life, and that's
what we want to concentrate on as we
look at Genesis chapter thirty-three.
Now the first four verses of the chapter
record the meeting of the two brothers, Jacob
and Esau, after many years of separation, and
the first step backward of Jacob.
The tests of life are illustrated here.
In chapter thirty-two Jacob meets with the
angel, but now he must meet with Esau.
How often do we find this true in
our Christian experience?
We have great blessing from the Lord.
There are times in our lives when we
take a step or two forward, and things
seem to be wonderful, and it's just at
that time often that our tests come.
And here he's wrestled with the angel in
his head, the God himself, bless him, but
now he must meet Esau.
Moses is on the mount and has that
wonderful experience of talking with the Lord God,
receiving the law from him, and then he
must come down and face rebellious, the rebellious
nation that has gone after the golden calf.
Our Lord on the mount of transfiguration is
transfigured and has the remarkable experience of being
in a sense glorified and given a foreview
of the successful completion of his work.
But coming down from the mount of transfiguration,
just a few days after that he must
be on Mount Calvary and there suffering for
the sins of sinners.
So it's almost a pattern of Christian things.
Great blessing and then a great trial.
As someone has said, he takes us up
the hill difficulty into the house beautiful where
we sleep in the chamber of peace, which
looks toward the sun rising.
Not that we should stay there, but that
we should be rested and accoutered and prepared
to meet Apollyon in the valley and to
pass unscathed through the shadow of death and
vanity fair.
So we should not be discouraged when we
face trials, and we should not expect because
we have great blessings that everything is going
to be wonderful thereafter.
There is no such thing as a plane
of life which we may reach and upon
which we shall never meet any difficulties or
trials.
Christian experience is not like that because God
is still working with us.
We are not built yet.
We are still under construction, and the saints
of God should expect it.
In the book of Proverbs we read, the
fear of man is a snare, but whoso
putteth his trust in the Lord is safe.
Jacob forgot that text if he ever knew
anything about it.
Because now when Esau comes with his 400
men, the man who has wrestled with God,
the man whose name now is God's fighter,
must take on the attitude of obsequious servility
with unusual attention devoted to Esau.
There was no reason for Jacob to have
passed on ahead of them and bowed himself
to the ground seven times until he came
near to Esau.
It's true that in the East they are
very courteous, very nice, but there was no
reason for him to do that.
He comes to Esau not in the power
of the Spirit, but in the power of
the flesh.
Troubles may always be met in the way
of the flesh or in the way of
the Spirit.
They may be met in panic or they
may be met in the peace of God
which garrisons our heart.
God had already told Jacob a long time
before that he was going to be with
him, and furthermore that he would accomplish everything
in his life that he was going to
accomplish.
Everything.
He had the absolute assurance from the very
Word of God that everything was going to
be wonderful so far as the future was
concerned, so far as the ultimate outcomes of
things.
But instead of meeting Esau in the power
of the promises of God, he meets Esau
in panic and fear and wonder over how
Esau shall respond.
Now these are experiences of course that are
unique for Jacob, but they are the same
experiences that you and I have.
Some of us may have to meet a
doctor in that way.
Some of us may have a meeting with
our employer that way.
We may be very disturbed.
Some of us may have to meet a
creditor.
The trials of life are of all the
same kind, though they are not the same
trials.
And as Christians we meet in the peace
of God, not in panic.
Well, Jacob takes his first step backward from
the high level of that struggle with the
Lord God at Panau.
Now in the conversation of the brothers that
follows, there is the second step backward.
You might think that Jacob's words to Esau
were simply polite and shrewd, because when Esau
invites him to come with him, well he
just says, after all you see I've got
the flocks and the herds and their nursing,
and if we march them too rapidly they
will die.
And furthermore I have my wives and I
have the little children with me and I've
got to care for them.
And so Esau, you go on, and then
in verse 14 he says, until I come
to my Lord at Seir.
Now Seir was down in the southeast.
And so Jacob's words, if he did what
he said he was going to do, would
be simply polite, shrewd, declining of Esau's invitation.
In fact it would be a testimony to
the truth, if given in the right spirit
and the right motive.
And he would have been defended by God,
even if he had gone down into Esau's
territory.
But there was no need for God's fighter
to lie, and that is exactly what he
did.
He didn't intend to go to Seir.
He said he was going in order to
get rid of Esau.
But we read in verse 16 and 17,
that Jacob journeyed to Succoth.
Now if you look on the map, Seir
is down to the southeast and Succoth is
up to the northwest.
So as soon as Esau passed over the
horizon, Jacob decided, now's my chance to go
the other way.
And so he took off to the northwest.
Now what do you imagine, what do you
imagine Esau said about Jacob when he found
out that Jacob was not following?
He said, now that's the fellow, that's the
fellow that said that all of that property
that was given to him, was given to
him by God.
He's the one who said that God in
his wonderful grace gave me all of this.
And furthermore, he's the fellow that said when
he looked upon my face it reminded him
of the face of God, and how he
had been kind and good to him.
I can just imagine him talking about Jacob
saying, well you know Jacob hasn't changed a
bit.
He's still a liar and a supplanter.
And how often things like that happen in
the lives of believers.
You see how easy it is for the
world to reproach and blaspheme the name of
the true God when we do not live
up to the profession that we so loudly
make.
It'd be much better not to be using
the name of the Lord if that's the
kind of activity that is going to follow
it.
So here is the danger of nullifying our
verbal professions by our vile contrary conduct of
lying and cutting the corner so far as
the truth is concerned.
Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse who has written some
notes on the book of Genesis has said
that Jacob's name was changed from Jacob to
Israel, but it might well have been from
the rest of the book through Jocke Ale
or Israel.
And he combined the two words Jacob and
Israel for Jocke Ale and Israel.
He combined them also in order to illustrate
the fact that throughout the rest of the
book what we have is a combination of
Jacob's supplanter and Israel, God's fighter.
Now the third step backward is described in
the last few verses and we'd like to
spend the remainder of our time on this.
So Esau returned that day on his way
to Seir and Jacob journeyed to Succoth and
he built for himself a house and made
booths for his livestock.
Therefore the place is called Succoth which means
tabernacles or tents.
And then we also read in verse 18
that he came to the city of Shechem
and then noticed the last claws and camped
before the city.
And then in the 19th verse it is
said that he bought a piece of the
land that he had pitched there.
And finally in verse 20 it's said that
he erected an altar.
Now I want you to notice the several
steps here that emphasize that Jacob has forgotten
all about the vow that he had offered
at a place named Bethel.
Back in chapter 8 and verse 21 we
read these words when we were expounding the
section in which Jacob at Bethel had the
vision of the latter and the angels ascending
and descending upon it.
Jacob had replied verse 20 he made a
vow saying if God will be with me
and will keep me on this journey that
I take and will give me food to
eat and garments to wear and I return
to my father's house in safety then the
Lord will be my God.
Now Jacob's forgotten all about that vow.
Furthermore he has forgotten that when God called
him back into the land he had said
to him I am the God of Bethel.
Where Jacob should have gone was Bethel.
Instead he goes to Succoth and then he
goes over near the city of Shechem and
he camps outside the city and takes up
a relatively permanent residence there because Donna the
young girl who has the terrible experience in
the next chapter was just a little girl
of about seven years of age about this
time so he must have stayed near the
city of Shechem for some time.
So you can see that these steps emphasize
that he's forgotten all about his vow now
and that Yahweh's forgotten that Yahweh is the
God of Bethel.
That was the goal.
He has taken these significant steps.
He has bought a house or he has
built a house.
He's built some barns.
Now there is one characteristic of the patriarchs.
They were to be pilgrims.
The New Testament says that Abraham was a
man who went around living in tents confessing
that they were not citizens of this world.
But here is one of them who's confessing
by his actions that he's very much a
citizen of this particular sphere.
He's not living like a pilgrim.
He's living like a permanent resident and so
he's built himself a house and he has
barns for his animals and furthermore he's camped
before the city.
Now the city was a heathen city.
What do you think was the kind of
conversation that Rachel and Jacob had as these
things were going on?
I think I can imagine Rachel saying something
like this.
You know Jacob, Joseph is getting along in
a few years now and he's up at
the age where he likes to be around
other kids.
And furthermore after all Leah has children and
Nebilha has children.
So we've got about a dozen children and
they need some relationship with other children.
And this constant moving around with all these
flocks out in the country, that's not too
good.
We ought to get near a city.
We ought to give the kids an opportunity
to have fellowship with other kids.
After all, that's the way you build up
proper personality, isn't it?
And so you can just imagine the kinds
of conversations they had.
Social fellowship for the children.
And so when Jacob comes outside the city
of Shechem and camps there, it's the attraction
of compromise in the Christian life.
Now there are many things of course that
indicate to us that children ought to have
fellowship with other children.
But to have fellowship with the world, that's
an entirely different matter.
Because the world always wins when we have
fellowship with the world.
We never win the world.
The world always defeats us.
Now of course there may be some individuals
in the world who are won, but the
world remains the world.
It is an enemy of the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
It's an enemy of our Lord.
He had to buy land.
So he buys the very land that God
has promised him.
And then in order to impress others perhaps
that he was a religious man, he built
that altar.
Now I would imagine from the tenor of
this narrative here that that is an attempt
to counteract his disobedience by ceremony.
And how often that happens.
When we are in the midst of disobeying
the Lord God, we're very careful that we
do things that make others think that we
really are quite spiritual.
And so we engage in spiritual exercises which
are not really, really what we wish deep
down, but we do them in order to
make an impression on other people.
So we attend church.
Or we attend the Bible study.
Or we even go to our home Bible
study.
Or we even come to the Lord's table.
But at the same time we are not
obedient to the words that are set forth
in Holy Scripture.
The Lord God is not nearly so interested
in our sacrifices as he is in the
obedience of the heart.
And I think that when Jacob built this
altar, it was not to truly worship this
Lord God in the sense that he may
have from time to time, but he's counteracting
his disobedience by the ceremony.
And the reason that I think that this
is bad is because of what follows.
Because it's in Shechem in the very next
chapter that the rape and the reproach and
the massacre takes place.
And so it's obvious this is a place
it seems to me that he should not
have been.
The idea that our children must have society,
that they cannot be recluses, is correct to
a certain point.
But to be a whirling is something else.
For the world is an enemy of the
Lord God.
James has said that the person who is
friendly with the world is at enmity with
the Lord God.
One cannot love the world and love the
Lord at the same time.
What is whirliness in the final analysis?
Well, I think one of the major features
of whirliness is the desire to appear, to
be, or to impress others.
And Jacob is living on the edge of
the world and the person who lives on
the edge of the world is going to
have difficulty.
Someone has said he needs a long spoon
who sups with the devil.
I wonder what Jacob was thinking when he
bought that land, too.
Was he thinking a bird and hen is
worth two in the bush?
The Lord's promised me this after all, but
I sure would like a little of it
now.
So he does.
But you cannot, I say, blend whirliness with
godliness.
You cannot blend society with Christ.
You cannot mix mammon and God, because the
world always wins out on those occasions.
I'd like to, in just the remaining moment,
try to draw our attention again to the
chief lesson.
We've seen these three steps in Jacob's backsliding.
When he meets Esau, the conversation that follows
and his deception and then finally in the
kind of life now that he begins to
live.
This illustrates, of course, that conversion and consecration
is no guarantee of an abiding faithfulness in
the spiritual life.
What we need is continuance.
And you can see this illustrated, I think,
throughout Holy Scripture.
Let's think for a moment of David.
David is a person who had a tremendous
revelation from the Lord God.
He was told that from his seed there
would come a ruler who would rule over
the whole of the face of the earth.
That is that the Messiah would come from
the seed of David.
And those great Davidic promises are given to
him in 2 Samuel chapter 7, but it's
not long after that that he is responsible
for the great sin of Bathsheba.
Well, let's think about the apostle Peter.
After Caesarea Philippi, there on the mountain at
Caesarea Philippi, the Lord had asked the apostles,
who do men say that I, the Son
of Man am?
They had given some replies and then the
Lord turned to them as a true preacher
and says, but whom say ye that I
am?
And Peter, in a flash of illumination from
the Lord God said, thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God.
In a few moments, the Lord Jesus takes
Peter, James, and John upon the Mount of
Transfiguration and there the Lord is transfigured before
him.
Later on he speaks about beholding the power
and the glory of the coming King.
But it's just a few days after that
that he denies, that he even knows the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Or think about those exhortations written in the
apostle, by the writer of the epistle to
the Hebrews, about the awful possibility of believers
who have been in the life of Christ
so long that they've passed from freshness and
spiritual things to the place where they have
someone that they have need for someone to
teach them again the first principles, spiritual senility.
It's as if they began as a child,
they reached maturity, but now they are back
where children are.
It is awfully possible for Christians to reach
the stage of spiritual senility where we need
again to be taught the things that we
were taught many years before.
You see, spiritual experiences, though they are true
and rich, do not exempt us from the
danger of degeneration.
The grace of perseverance is perhaps the greatest
need of all of us.
Haven't we all heard of some servant of
the Lord, or some well-known Christian whose
testimony was outstanding, but who nevertheless, at a
point in his life, after being honored and
blessed by the Lord and by men, has
fallen into sin and shame.
We think of some who've commenced their Christian
life and their ministry full of hope, full
of promise.
People have said, oh, what a great future.
But now, because of failure to stick to
the principles of the Word of God, they
are what someone has called unfulfilled prophecies, by
reason of disobedience to the heavenly vision.
They virtually cease to pray.
They've ceased to be unworthy.
They've adopted unworthy methods in their ministry or
in their witnessing.
They've pandered to worldliness and earthly ambitions, and
the result is a deadness and a darkness
and a dryness and a dullness in spiritual
things.
Souls not being saved through their testimony, believers
not being encouraged, everything stale and unprofitable, as
Paul says, cast away, discarded as useless.
Not that they're not believers, but useless in
the Christian life, rejected because of loss of
relationship to the Lord God, the danger of
degeneracy.
And we're not talking about men who are
preachers.
We're talking about all of us in the
family of the faithful.
It's possible for all of us to have
a bright beginning, a glorious time in life
when we are growing spiritually, when there is
a vitality in our Christian experience.
Maybe you've never stood by on a pulpit
like this, but nevertheless you've studied the Word
of God and things have begun to come
to be in place, and you've been thrilled,
and you've grown in the knowledge of the
Lord, and you've had a Christian testimony with
your friends and the people with whom you
come in contact.
But now, well, the reading of the Bible,
that's a good thing, but I don't really
do much of it.
To get down on your knees and really
agonize before the Lord in the sense that
you're earnestly petitioning him that you might grow
in grace and for the specific interests of
the Lord in your life, well, that's long
gone if it ever was there.
You don't have any experiences like that.
And consequently, the whole of Christian life has
settled down into the drudgery of having to
attend a meeting on Sunday morning, or maybe
on a Wednesday night, or even a Sunday
night.
You've lost the love that was there in
the beginning.
Moody once said to one of the leading
religious men of his day that the one
thing that he feared most was loss of
testimony for Jesus Christ.
Last Sunday morning I preached in a little
chapel in Toronto, both in the morning and
in the evening.
And when I was there, I, at this
little chapel, Bridal Grove Chapel in Toronto, I
went in at 9.30 for the Lord's
Supper.
They have the Lord's Supper every Sunday morning
at 9.30, and a meeting like we
have here on Sunday night.
I would imagine in that chapel there were
no more than 40 people there at the
Lord's Supper, although at the meeting later on
there were 125 or perhaps 150.
It's not a large auditorium, but they had
been given some property which is now worth
a million dollars, right in a beautiful location.
I don't imagine they have more than an
acre or an acre and a half of
land, but it's very valuable land in Toronto.
Well, they have a testimony, and it's a
nice testimony.
Well, I came in and I sat down
on the second row up front, near the...
where the elements were set before us, and
just about a minute before the meeting began,
an elderly man came in.
And I was sitting just about ten, well,
probably only five feet from him.
He came in and he sat down right
by the aisle, and he had a...
he had a...
it looked like a small suitcase, about 18
inches long and about 14 or 15 inches
wide, and it was about this thick, almost
six inches.
Well, when he sat down, he put that
down, and I wondered if that was his
pair of pajamas that he had slept in
the night before.
But no, he reached down in a moment
and he picked it up and he took
it...
the top off of it, and by the
way, it was so old, this thing that
he had it in.
I think it was made in the reign
of Queen Victoria.
It was graying with age or browning with
age.
It was...
the leather was rotting away.
But anyway, he took out this Bible, and
the Bible was about as big as Webster's
unabridged dictionary.
Great big thing.
And he opened it up, and I looked
over on the pages, and his pages were
filled with notes, every page, and they were
written in a beautiful handwriting, all orderly, down
the margins, at wide margins.
Later on I found out this was a
Newberry Bible that was 60...
he had had it for 60 years, and
others had commented on the fact that he
wrote in it with a hand that was
so beautiful, small, just like script, almost.
So he sat down, he opened that Bible
up on his lap, and I looked, and
I...
now that man is at least 80 years
of age.
I thought it was great he could come
in and have his Bible there, and the
meeting started, and we sang a hymn or
so, and someone prayed.
It was an open meeting like we have
here, in which the Holy Spirit is free
to move on the men to participate, and
then suddenly I heard him speaking out.
He was still sitting down, and he read
Ephesians chapter 5, verses 1 and 2.
He just said, will you turn to Ephesians
chapter 5, verse 1 and verse 2, and
everybody did.
And so he read those verses which have
to do with the sacrifice of Christ.
Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children,
walk in love just as Christ also loved
you, and gave himself up for us, an
offering and a sacrifice to God as a
fragrant aroma.
And then he began, he...
after he had done this, he folded up
his Bible, put it on the side, and
stood up.
He put one hand on the front pew
in order to steady himself, and then he
turned around to the audience and began to
expound.
Had an amazing number of facts in his
mind.
He said now in the epistle to the
Romans, the word righteousness or the roots occur
58 times.
And he mentioned some other thing that occurred
6 times.
I remember he asked, what is the glory
of God?
He said that's the perfect harmony of the
42 attributes of God.
I said 42?
I never have known of any theologian who
got more than about 30 attributes of God,
but he's got 42.
But then I said he's old.
It's possible he's had a longer time looking
than the rest of the theologians.
But he began to expound, and it was
a beautiful exposition of the Old Testament.
He turned to the offerings, and he spoke
about the burnt offering, and the peace offering,
and the meal offering.
And he was exalting the Lord, and then
he began to preach, and he got fervent.
And I remember that he finally said you
know if these things really gripped us, and
his hand was going, he was, by the
way he was 92 and a half years
of age.
92 and a half.
I saw a picture afterwards of him when
he was 75, and it was published 16
years before that.
He was 92 and a half years of
age, and he stood up, and he began
to get fervent.
And I remember this last statement, he said
now if we, these things really gripped us,
said our meeting would be, and this is
the way his hand was going, our meeting
would be lively, and vital, and not like
a funeral service.
And I noticed everybody in the audience was
looking at him and smiling.
They were listening.
They knew him.
I didn't know him, but he had been
there for about six weeks from New Zealand.
Well it turned out he was Mr. Charles
J.
Rolls, who was educated at Cambridge.
He was a missionary in India.
He was a home director of a faith
mission many years.
His forebears had real prominence in England.
He was named after Lord Clangotok's third son,
the Honorable Charles Rolls, who in 1906 with
Frederick Royce formed the Rolls-Royce Company.
And his name was Charles J.
Rolls.
This Newberry Bible he'd had for sixty years,
bulging with all of his study notes and
outlines in this meticulous engraving-like script of
his.
And incidentally after the morning meeting, Shirley Mims,
Dr. Mims' wife, came to me and said,
I believe that that's the same Mr. Rolls
who was here about twenty years ago who
spent a week in our home.
And she said, furthermore, he likes to bake
bread.
And I said, that's right, and he still
bakes bread.
He bakes bread for his family right at
this moment.
And even in Toronto when he was visiting,
he went in the kitchen and baked bread.
He wants to be doing something all the
time.
He has written several books on the attributes
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I couldn't
help but think, if God should enable me
to live to be ninety-two years of
age, I would want to be a man
as fervent in spirit as Mr. Rolls was.
What a tremendous testimony to remain fervent in
spirit and not have the experience of the
danger of degeneration.
Now the rewards of clinging instead of cringing
before men and the world are very evident.
The fear of man brings a snare, but
whoso putteth his trust in the Lord is
safe.
While the light that God gave to Jacob
at Panal would have given him protection from
all the disasters that faced him afterwards, would
have protected him and kept him and encouraged
him, there is no reason why we should
not have the assurance of the presence and
power of the Lord with us no matter
what we face.
May the Lord deliver us from degeneration.
What a terrible thing it is to grow
cold in spiritual things, to avoid the reading
of the Word of God, to avoid the
time by your bedside and the pouring out
of your heart before the Lord, to avoid
the fellowship with him.
Life does become dull and drab and dead,
and it's no wonder that some of the
things have to happen to us by way
of discipline.
May the Lord God speak to our hearts.
Delivering us from the danger of degeneracy.
If you're here this morning and you have
never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, your
responsibility of course is to recognize that he's
offered the all-atoning sacrifice and to flee
to the shedding of the precious blood for
the forgiveness of sins.
May God help you to come.
And then when you come and you have
the vitality of the forgiveness of sins, don't
lose the joy.
Make the Word of God your food.
Have a time of prayer regularly with the
Lord God.
Get down on your knees.
Pour your heart out before him.
Learn what it is to truly pray.
You might even shed a few tears by
your bedside.
It won't hurt.
And when you face the trials of life,
you'll face them with the Lord.
Let's stand for the benediction.
We are grateful Lord for the lessons that
are found in Holy Scripture.
Deliver us from spiritual senility.
Deliver us from the peril of degeneracy in
our Christian life.
What a reproach to the Lord God to
lie and cheat like the world.
O God, by thy wonderful grace uphold us.
Make us different.
We know that in ourselves we are like
Jacob, crooked.
Glorify thy name in thy blessing to us.
Magnify thy grace in our lives.
And Father, if there should be some here
who have never believed in Jesus Christ, bring
them to him, whom to know is life
eternal.
For his name's sake.
Amen.