Our subject this morning is really the title
of the book that was written in the
United Kingdom a few, quite a number of
years ago, entitled Prescription for Anxiety.
And we are going to base our meditation
upon words that are found in the psalm
that we read together a little earlier.
You'll find the words repeated in verse 11,
but they appear first of all in verse
7 in Psalm 46.
And according to the New International Version, the
rendering goes thus, The Lord Almighty is with
us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Same in verse 11.
The Lord Almighty is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress.
We are living in a world that is
full of anxiety, full of apprehensiveness and worry,
and it is more than probable that many
of us who are present here this morning
would have to confess that our hearts know
something about this.
In some cases, our fears and anxieties arise
out of ignorance.
Things are not as bad as we think
they are.
We are imagining things, it may be.
And if only we knew a little more,
we need not be as harassed and as
worried as we are.
But in many cases, it is the most
knowledgeable people that worry most.
This is one of the outstanding features of
this matter of worrying in the 20th century.
The time was when the folk who worried
were dubbed as largely ignorant, but nowadays the
folk who worry most and are most concerned
and pessimistic about the future are invariably the
most sophisticated and the most knowledgeable.
And in the light of what they know,
they are jittery, and they're not backward in
sharing with us the reasons for their fears
and their anxieties.
No reasonable person, therefore, will doubt the overwhelming
burden of worry that envelops the world this
morning.
It's not only found in one quarter of
the world, one part of the world, one
segment or section, nor indeed among one segment
of any given society.
It's fairly general, but it is very evident
nowadays among those who know most about political
affairs and about what is happening and what
can happen in the light of current tendencies.
In our own situation, there are so many
things that cause us to worry.
One of the challenging features of our day
and age, speaking here now in Canada and
in North America, perhaps in the Western world,
and indeed more general than that too, but
one of the most sad features is the
breakup of family life.
And the family, the home, has ceased to
be in our day the kind of haven
of peace and a renewal that it was
meant to be in the will of God
and has been.
When we left Westminster Chapel in London, one
of the aging beacons there, and you know,
when you get on in years, you have
a knack of repeating things.
My good friend was very often repeating certain
things.
He was very far on in years and
had been quite a politician in his time
and had spent probably years of his life
sitting in the House of Commons.
I remember him referring to one particular man
in public affairs in Britain who got involved
in challenging certain things that were going on
in society.
I shall not refer to details.
And for a period of years, he was
the butt of attack from the newspaper, from
the media, from every quarter conceivable.
They poked fun at him.
They dragged him through the mud.
They dragged his name through the mire.
They charged him with this and they charged
him with that.
But one thing was evident.
Whenever he came to the House of Commons
and stood up, he was full of optimism
and of grace and of charm.
And he really caused the people to wonder,
how can this man come up smiling every
day, and it was every day, when everybody
seems to be opposed to him, with just
a few exceptions.
It was following the death of his wife
that the secret came out.
He said in public that he had lost
not only a wife who had been a
partner, but a wife who had been a
faithful partner and a helpmate and had been
responsible for the healing of his wounds at
the end of every day.
And he said, however lacerated in spirit I
might have been when I got home at
the end of a day, my wounds were
always healed before I went out the next
morning.
What a testimony to a partner.
You see, we don't know very much of
that today.
The institution of the home has been attacked
and when we are lacerated and when we
are wounded, we have to go home to
some scrabbles and scraps and we quarrel and
we know very little of this, the meaning
and the fulfillment of the divine institution of
family life.
Over and above this, of course, there are
worries that emerge in most of our homes
in the bringing up of children, in the
education of our children, finding a job for
them when they've been educated and so forth.
There is the growing unruliness of society.
It's not safe to go out at night,
whether you travel by subway or whether you
walk on the street or whether you drive
in your own car.
Somebody was telling me about something that happened
on the 401 the other day and he
was traveling quite happily in the right direction
and here is somebody who's really gone nuts,
coming in the wrong direction.
Of course, he was drunk.
But in a world such as this, you
never know what's happening next.
And when once that kind of thing happens
to you, your nerves tend to be frayed.
You really don't feel safe or secure anywhere.
Then there are our national and international problems.
The advent of this nuclear age has catapulted
us into a situation which is a thousandfold
more menacing than anything our forefathers knew.
Atomic and nuclear stations can break down, you
know that, I know that, with possibly catastrophic
consequences beyond anything that most of us have
imagined.
And here it is the knowledgeable that fear
most.
Our still nuclear weapons can decimate and destroy
a whole civilization in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye.
It can be done.
Many of us are thinking nowadays about the
horrors of nuclear war.
Somewhere in the back of most of our
minds, I suppose, there is the question, will
it come?
Will it happen?
And if it will, will it be soon?
With five nuclear, seven nuclear submarines on either
side of the America and Canada, Pacific and
the Atlantic, whose bombs can reach every city
in Canada and in America in a few
moments.
It's no wonder that we feel our nerves
a little frayed.
And as for that kind of war, you
know, the books are telling us that the
good news is that you will be destroyed.
If you die in a nuclear war, that
is the good news.
The bad news is if you don't, if
you have to live with the consequences, with
the fruit, if you have to come back
to consciousness and face the kind of thing
that will have to be faced following a
nuclear holocaust, that's the bad news.
Now listen to my terms.
These terms are written into the literature on
the subject today, and you can find it
anywhere.
I was flabbergasted to read the other day
that for every man, woman, and child in
the world, now take this, for every man,
woman, and child in the whole wide world,
there is today the equivalent of 10,000
tons of TNT in the world.
You can't have all that destructive matter in
this little planet of ours and expect peace
to continue.
I also read something else, and this frightened
me a little more than anything.
I read of the military high-ups on
this North American continent simulating the kind of
thing that they may have to face over
the next 10 years.
And because of the amount of destructive material
in the world, they found that they were
unable to unleash their atomic weapons to kill
the enemy without destroying a large fraction of
their own people as well at the same
time.
All this is in simulating situations that may
arise, and when they found it necessary to
unleash atomic bombs, they could only do so
by destroying a vast multitude of their own
people at the same time.
You see what's happening?
Causes of concern, causes of anxiety.
One could go on, and I don't want
to pursue that, but let's face the fact
we do not come to this text this
morning without recognizing that we are living in
an age when there are reasons for anxiety.
But there is an answer too.
The Lord of hosts, says the psalmist, is
with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge or
our fortress.
The answer to fear and anxiety lies in
the assurance that there is one whom we
can speak of as the Lord of hosts
and the God of Jacob.
And if only, if only we can be
on his side.
If only we can make sure that he
and we are working together in harmony and
in fellowship.
That we are on his side, doing his
will.
Living as he called upon us to live.
Serving as he called upon us to serve.
Doing what he's called upon us to do.
Then we have nothing to worry about.
Let me explain.
First of all I would like you to
look at the psalmist's twofold designation of God.
The Lord Almighty or the Lord of hosts.
The God of Jacob.
The conviction that quelled the fears of this
ancient songster and gave him a sure anchorage
in the storm that had overtaken him has
to do with the nature of God in
the first place and then with our being
rightly related to God so that God is
with him.
And he was sure of that.
Let's look at these.
First of all God is the Lord of
hosts.
The Lord Almighty.
In this designation the psalmist attaches to the
covenant name of God, translated here Lord.
He's attaching to that a word meaning host
and thus signifying the all-mightiness of the
covenant God.
The utter adequacy of the one who has
entered into covenant with his own.
His total sufficiency to meet any exigency in
order to fulfill his promises and complete his
purposes.
This language becomes popular with the prophets.
But the question is how did this particular
aspect of God's nature help quell the quivering
fears of the psalmist?
And how can it do so for us?
Well the answer lies in the fact that
he is Lord of hosts and he's God
of Jacob.
Look at the first.
The Lord of hosts.
It's interesting to follow that word through in
the scriptures.
I'm not going to do it exhaustively this
morning.
That would not be possible.
But I want you to notice that it
is used quite often in the Old Testament
of armies.
It's used for example in 1 Samuel 17
45.
David said to the Philistine, you come against
me with a sword and spear and javelin.
But I come against you in the name
of the Lord Almighty.
The God of hosts.
Or as the NIV says, the God of
the armies of Israel.
The references to armies.
The host and the command.
Then again in other places the same word
is used of the whole.
The starry hosts.
The stellar system.
The planets.
The constellations.
Bildad the Shuhite asks Job for example.
He makes a statement first and then he
asks the question.
Dominion and all belong to God, says Bildad.
He establishes order in the heights of the
heaven.
And then he goes on.
Can his forces in the heavens, and the
word is hosts.
Can his forces, that's how the NIV translates
it, be numbered?
Upon whom does his light not shine?
The same Hebrew word is translated as translated
forces.
Can his forces be numbered?
Is the word that we are considering.
Meaning the trials were translated hosts.
Isaiah seems to use the same word in
the same sense.
In the famous chapter 14 verse 26 Isaiah
says, lift up your eyes and look to
the heavens.
Who created all these things?
He brings out the starry hosts one by
one.
And he calls them each by name.
Because of his great power and his mighty
strength, not one of them is missing.
And in chapter 45 and verse 12 he's
got a similar thought.
It is I, says the Lord, who made
the earth and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens.
I marshaled their starry hosts.
But I think that you have the most
comprehensive use of it in such places as
Genesis chapter 2 and the opening word, the
opening verse.
But the NIV rendering of Genesis 2-1
goes thus.
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed.
And their vast array.
Now the words vast array come from the
Hebrew word elsewhere translated hosts.
What does this mean?
It means this.
That the Lord is the creator of the
ends of the earth and of all things
on the earth and in the firmament.
He's the Lord of all.
He's the Lord of the hosts.
There isn't an army but that he masters
it.
There isn't a constellation but that he's responsible
for it.
There isn't anything in outer space but that
he is Lord of it.
There is nothing that can emerge from anywhere
but that he is Lord of it and
Lord over it.
That's where we must begin.
We conclude from that brief excursus that the
reference to God as Jehovah of hosts or
as the Lord Almighty is all-inclusive.
The word encompasses every created thing or person,
angelic or human.
It includes the stars and the galaxies in
space as well as the armed forces of
men on earth.
He who commands the Russian forces is the
Lord God Almighty.
I couldn't live if I didn't believe that.
He who commands the American forces is the
Lord of the heaven.
And if you don't believe that you might
as well shut shop.
He has sovereign control and there is no
army that can move without his permission.
Of course the pointed question is this.
This man could say the Lord of hosts
is with us but can you and I
say that he is with us?
Now that's where the rub comes.
Are we walking with him?
Do you know him by name?
Do you talk to him?
Are you on speaking terms with him?
Would you know if he were with you?
Would you know if he were not with
you?
Do you know God?
Know him enough to recognize his presence?
If the Lord of hosts is with us
then the major cause for fear is gone.
But that's not everything the psalmist has said.
I want you to notice the second designation
of God as the God of Jacob.
Now if you know your old testament and
if you know anything about Jacob you really
you really should have a question mark about
the propriety of this designation.
Why on earth does God let himself be
known as the God of Jacob?
There's nothing in Jacob to be proud of.
I wouldn't want my name linked up with
Jacob would you?
You wouldn't if you knew him.
But God is known as the God of
Jacob.
Why God of Jacob?
If he desired to stress the covenant bond
between God and his people would it not
have been better to refer to the God
of Abraham?
Because it was Abram, it is with Abram
that God began anew.
He made his promises to Abraham.
Abraham was the recipient of the promises.
After all Abram was the father of the
nation.
Well why not refer to him as the
God of Abraham?
That would make sense.
Or if you want to change that, if
there was any reason for changing that, why
not speak of him as the God of
Isaac, the miracle child?
Because the promises that God made to Abram
could not be fulfilled until there was a
first child and Sarah was barren and she
was past age and could not possibly, humanly
speaking, bring forth a child.
But God made a promise that she would.
And my, he kept them on the string
for a long, long, long, long time and
it became more and more and more impossible
until you say at the end, it will
never happen.
But it did happen, you see.
And little Isaac was born.
Now surely this would be meaningful to speak
of God as the God of Isaac, the
God of the miracle child, the God who
kept his first promise that made all the
other promises possible.
Surely there would be meaning to that.
But here he comes in and he speaks
of God as the God of Jacob.
Why do that?
Now I have to tell you some things
about Jacob that I have no delight in
telling you.
You say, why then are you going to
say them?
Because it's necessary for the exposition of my
text.
It is necessary for us to remind one
another of the kind of man Jacob was.
We do not gloat as if we were
better than he, but we take the testimony
of scripture.
He was a supplanter from his birth.
He was a swindler from the womb.
The son of Isaac and Rebekah was a
crooked, grasping cheat of a fellow from the
time he was a young boy.
If you think that those terms are going
too far, let me remind you of holy
writ where Isaiah in chapter 41 and verse
14 speaks of him, thou worm, Jacob.
The Holy Spirit speaks of him as a
worm.
You wouldn't like anyone to call you a
worm of a man or a worm of
a woman.
Somebody who lives underground in the darkness and
slithers his way around quietly, you know.
You wouldn't like that, would you?
This was a worm of a man.
The man who could cheat his father, his
twin brother, and his uncle as Jacob did
is utterly perverted.
And this man was totally perverted.
Nevertheless, the God who entered into covenant with
Abraham reiterated his intentions to Isaac, did not
have to revise his plans one iota when
this guy came out of the womb, this
Jacob, the supplanter, the cheat.
God says, I can cope with him too.
And little by little he sets the wheels
of providence are going until at last I'm
concentrating, I'm bringing the whole thing into a
nutshell.
Until at last, when the wheels of providence
have wrought and God has visited him in
Bethlehem and in Peniel, out of the cheat
comes a prince with God.
See, our God is not only able to
deal with the hosts outside of us, but
with the heart inside of us.
He did it for Jacob, a cheat, a
swindler, the worm.
Indeed, I suppose of all the statements of
Scripture that really challenge one, this is one
that challenges me.
You know, what about you?
God loved Jacob.
He hated Esau, a sportsman, a man who
loved to go out with his friends and
shoot game and come back jovial and happy
and easygoing.
He never quarreled with Esau.
Esau didn't believe anything so much enough as
to bother to quarrel with you.
Esau was all easygoing.
Wherever you met Esau, you get on with
Esau, all right?
But Jacob, so different.
He never knew what was going on in
his mind, what scheme was being fabricated.
But God loved Jacob.
How can God love worms like that?
I don't know, but I know he loved
me too.
Now, I am not here concerned with the
details, but only with the principle involved.
God had no need to revise his plans
when he came to Jacob because he was
able to cope with a heart of Jacob
and the fallen nature and perverted nature of
Jacob, just as he's able to be the
Lord of the hosts of the universe.
The Lord of the hosts is the Lord
of the heart.
These two designations of God, therefore, bring together
the infinite power and indestructible grace of God.
Now, the psalmist said, the Lord of hosts
is with us.
And the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Not just a place to hide in, but
a fortress is a place where there are
resources to build up again.
God is a fortress where Jacob can not
only come and get rid of his sin,
but build himself up as a man anew,
a prince with God, a fortress.
Now, it's because of the knowledge of God
that the psalmist could dare say this kind
of thing.
We're not afraid, it is.
It's because of a faith such as that
that Psalm 46 came to birth.
Whether he sung it first or wrote it
first, I do not know, but this is
where it came from.
He knew God to be this kind of
God.
And he will only sing or write a
psalm such as this, whose knowledge of God
is of this same order.
Now, that brings me to say this.
This twofold designation of God corresponds to the
unchanging and universal needs of men.
All our problems and therefore all our fears
arise either from the hosts around us or
the inside of us.
But if we may know God to be
this kind of God and be related to
him as the psalmist was related to him,
here is a place where we may have
peace in prospect of whatever comes.
Prescription for anxiety.
Let me repeat a few things about the
terror arising from the hosts outside of us.
I suppose that we are more afraid than
our forefathers were of certain things because certain
things have not come into existence in their
day, such as nuclear power.
But there is another factor too.
Many of our forefathers, not all of them,
but many of them, probably most of them,
didn't know the next continent, save by name.
Oh, they may have read, they knew there
were certain continents.
But you see, you and I don't only
know the continents of the world, but they
all come into our dwelling places, our homes,
our apartments.
A box brings them in.
And we have all the troubles of the
world, not only taking place around us, but
they're all coming in and they're happening in
our kitchen or in our living room or
in our den or whatever, sometimes in our
bedrooms before we go to sleep.
The whole world comes crashing into our living
rooms.
The war in Afghanistan, in Iraq, the war
between Iraq and Iran.
We have some Iraqis here, pray for them.
And we have some Iranians here, pray for
them.
They have people back home at war.
The devastation in Lebanon, in Beirut.
We've seen these things, we've seen them, there
they are.
And I've been sitting in my easy chair
and looking at it and seeing all this
hideous thing taking place before my eyes.
It's right there.
I can almost put my hand on that
bloody mess I see on the screen and
touch it.
And it comes so near.
And you can see these big belly little
children in places like Abyssinia and in other
parts of the world and in India and
they come into your home and you see
them and you see the starving look of
these poor pallid cheeks.
Some of our fathers might have known about
them but they didn't come into their kitchens.
They might have read about them but they
never saw what you and I see.
My, I have seen the dark side of
the moon sitting in my study, haven't you?
It's incredible but it's true.
But you see you can't take all this
in.
You can't be bombarded by all these facts
without being a bit afraid.
If you're not afraid your thinking processes are
not functioning as they ought.
If you're not afraid your imagination has been
switched off somewhere.
If your imagination and your mind are functioning
as they ought and your conscience, you and
I ought to be afraid.
Humanly speaking some of these things we see
are positively nauseating and we could go on.
But, but, but, you see the psalmist got
the answer.
The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress.
The hosts of heaven and earth have struck
terror into the hearts of thinking people so
that the, so that life has become a
terror to multitudes.
But the psalmist knew the answer.
A terror arising from the tendencies within us.
Oh yes, it's true to say that not
all man's troubles come from outside.
The stars and the constellations may frighten us
by their mystery and immensity.
The creation that surrounds us, personal and impersonal,
can make us dimly pessimistic about the future.
The military potential of friendly and unfriendly nations.
All this.
But there is a cause of dire trouble
which is much nearer home.
It lies in our own hearts.
Though life has changed much in the intervening
years since this psalmist wrote his song and
since Jacob lived in the Old Testament days,
there is no evidence that the type illustrated
by Jacob is anywhere near becoming extinct.
On the contrary, it is most prevalent in
our own day and age, even right here
in North America, in Canada, in Toronto.
There are people who come from the womb
to grab and to cheat and to make
everything their own.
Careless of anything that happens to anybody else
but number one.
And they would build up their own little
empire and let everybody else go to hell
and to smithereens.
If only they can have their pot of
gold.
We live in an age like that.
An age that has got drunk on mammon
and on gold.
Brothers and sisters, we become insensitive to it.
There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of
boys and girls dying of hunger today because
we are worshiping gold.
Oh yes, we still have Jacob's with us.
We still have cheats with us.
Grasping.
Oh, listen, the God of hosts
can change the heart of Jacob.
I see Zacchaeus coming out from this first
interview with the Lord Jesus.
If I've stolen anything from anybody, if I've
been extortionate in my business and I've rubbed
too far and I've been too sour and
too thoughtless, I give back fourfold.
And the half of my goods I give
to the poor anyway.
I want to get rid of it now.
See what's happening?
The heart has been changed.
That's not Jacob.
That's in the New Testament.
But it is as true right here today
as ever.
The Lord of the hosts outside is the
Lord of the heart inside.
He who controls the host can change the
heart and he can change yours.
As you see, so very well so far
I have largely been thinking of people outside
of ourselves, haven't I?
I've been speaking in the third person.
You know there's a little bit of Jacob
in all of us.
In all of us.
There's a little bit of the cheat in
all of us.
But God is able to deal with that
too.
England was mystified when Charles Wesley of all
people wrote his hymn in which he said
this, Just and holy is thy name.
Nobody was upset by that or worried.
But with this, speaking of himself particularly, I
am all unrighteousness, vile and full
of sin.
I am vile and full of truth and
grace.
Charles Wesley, the impeccable man, the man against
whom nobody could point a finger, the darling
of the home, the boy who never said
no when he should say yes and never
said yes when he should say no.
This marvelous product of the most marvelous of
homes perhaps of his day.
And yet he says, vile and full of
sin I am.
Have you discovered the plague of your heart,
my friend?
Or are you able to sleep through as
you read the scriptures?
I come to the end.
As the answer objectively, we have a God
who is Lord of hosts and God of
Jacob.
But now, coming a little nearer home, the
answer lies in this.
Somehow or other, the objective God outside of
me has got to be so related with
me or I have got to become so
related to him that I can say what
the Psalmists say, that God, the Lord of
hosts, is with us.
And we, for our part, are in the
fortress where we can be renewed and re
-energized and changed and have resources to live
the different life as Jacob.
Now, you see, that's where the point rubs.
That's where the shoe pinches.
Now, I've no doubt that many of us
this morning have a view of God which
is quite consistent with both these two main
affirmations.
But listen, my friend, are you right with
God?
Is he with you?
Do you walk through the days and the
years in the consciousness that God is with
you?
Now, you say to me, you've left us
now.
For one thing, how could the Psalmist know
that God was with him?
How can I know that God is with
me?
Well, let me tell you, the Psalmist wasn't
dreaming.
This was no hallucination.
And if you had gone through the experience
he probably went through, now there are differences
here, differences of understanding.
But I take it, I take the generally
accepted view of the authorship of this Psalm,
that it was sung, first of all, after
a great deliverance of the city of Jerusalem.
185,000 Assyrian troops had marshaled around the
city of Jerusalem.
And the king and the prophet and the
leaders within the city, they were like birds
in a cage and they couldn't move.
There was no way out and nobody could
come in, only the enemy.
They went to sleep one night and they
woke up the next morning, you read it
in the book of Kings, and 185,000
corpses were astrew the pathways and the highways
around the city of Jerusalem.
What had happened to them?
No human hand had touched them, no army
had been in combat with them, no man
from anywhere could have withstood them, but something
had happened, what had happened?
The God of Jacob had come down and
the Lord of the hosts had said to
his unwilling armies, stop, turn back, and they
wouldn't.
And he made corpses of them.
The psalmist knew that God was with him,
you see.
He'd manifested himself.
Well, you say, well, we've got nothing like
that.
God doesn't seem to do anything like that
today.
Well, now, wait a moment.
What is the meaning of Christmas?
That's not the full answer, but let me
ask this first.
The New Testament tells us that the meaning
of Christmas is this, that one was born
who earned for himself and deserved in himself
the designation Immanuel, God with us.
And he came down and he walked alongside
of men and women in all their tragic
conditions and situations and fears, and he took
their burdens upon himself, their sicknesses, their sorrows,
their diseases, a matter of their eternal destiny.
He even took their sins upon himself.
And when he had died upon the tree
of Calvary to bear away the sins of
the world, he was buried in a tomb.
He rose again from the dead, and then
he ascended to the Father.
Ah, there you are, you see.
I can hear somebody saying, he came down,
he lived long ago, he did something all
right.
We believe that, but there's nothing here that
is comparable to what happened outside the city
of Jerusalem that makes us sure that God
is with us.
Wait a moment, my friend.
Haven't you read about Pentecost?
Our blessed Lord Jesus ascended from the earth
in a body that was glorified in the
process, and he entered into the presence of
God in heaven, and the Father and the
Son came forth again down into this earth,
onto our planet, not now in a body
of human flesh, but in the Spirit.
And on the day of Pentecost, God came
down not to be touched by the hand
or to be seen by the eye, but
to be experienced in the soul.
You say, is there any evidence of this?
Read Acts chapter 2.
Read the book of Acts and see what
happened.
Because God by the Spirit had come down
to inhabit his body, the church, what did
happen?
I'll tell you what happened.
The power of Rome was turned upside down.
The whole Roman Empire was turned upside down,
generally speaking.
The gospel invaded even the palace in Rome,
and men and women were transformed, and they
were changed, and Jacob's became Israel's, and Cheats
became Christians.
How?
Because God had come to live in human
hearts by the Holy Spirit.
That's the story of the church.
Moving into Gentile territory as well as Jewish,
going into Greece as well as into Rome,
until, blessed be the name of God, he
came to England, in distant England, across the
Atlantic, and he came here.
God is with his people, my friends, where
the Spirit is.
And the Spirit is where his fruit is.
And I am finding the fruit of the
Spirit around me today.
To me, one of the most precious things
in life is to discover that in this
very day and age, in these very days,
in these very weeks, God is laying his
hand upon men and women of the lineage
and stock of Jacob, and changing them.
And he's showing the infinity of his capacity
to deal with all the hosts that are
marshaled against them outside, inside.
And he brings into birth new creature.
And they know, and those who see, and
those who hear, know that God is with
his people.
Are you right with God?
Have you made your peace with him?
Have you opened your heart and your life
to receive the incoming influences of his lordly,
sovereign power and grace?
Have you come like Jacob, perhaps unwillingly, by
the scruff of your neck, maybe, in a
Bethel experience, probably in the middle of the
night, trying to sleep on a stone that
was a pillow?
Do you know anything of God coming after
you and putting his hand upon you, and
showing you that there was a ladder into
his presence, and then letting you go?
There, from there you go back, you make
some kind of a profession, maybe, and you
go back to live the same kind of
life for many years.
You're still the cheat you were before, though
you've had an experience of God.
But the mills of God that grind slowly,
grind ultimately to the kind of powder from
which he can make his own statue in
the hearts of men.
And he brings you back to a place
called Peniel, and he walks with you, and
he talks with you.
Oh, dear men and women, this is the
answer.
And you see, the point is, this is
not only the answer for those of us
gathered here this morning.
We need to know it to take it
out to the world.
The world is languishing.
The world doesn't know there is such a
God as this.
And the world doesn't know that there is
a possibility of the Jacobs of our day
being transformed and becoming associated with a God
of covenant, that they may know him and
serve him forever and ever, in this life
and in the next.
I conclude, if you're not right with God
this morning, this is a day of salvation.
I bid you, men, women, young, old, don't
leave this sanctuary until you know that God
is with you.
Call upon him.
Cry to him.
Kneel before him, if needs be.
But call upon him until he will give
the tangible evidence of his presence in your
heart, and his peace in your soul, and
his hope in your bosom.
And however conscious you may be of your
unworthiness and of the evil ways of your
nature, you can look to him to make
a prince of you, or a princess.
Yet, let us pray.
Shall we spend a moment quietly before God?
Something tells me that perhaps the Lord is
very near to some of us this morning.
This is a day of salvation, and it
may be that God is visiting us today
to do something new.
I don't know.
But if he's speaking to you, if he's
touching your conscience, and your mind, and your
will, and challenging you to do something, let
me say to you what the Virgin Mary
said to those who were in charge of
the wedding in Cana of Galilee.
She said, Whatsoever he says to you, do
it, do it.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved.
Look unto me, all the ends of the
earth, and be saved.
I will be your God, and you shall
be my people.
Heavenly Father, there comes a point when no
one can pray for another, and each man
must pray for himself.
We bow before you now, each one alone.
We ask that you will help us to
respond to your presence through your word and
by your spirit with us today.
As you speak to your own dear people,
or to those who may not as yet
be in right relationship with you, speak clearly.
Draw us forcibly that we may have no
doubt about it, but that you are here
to become our God.
In Jesus' name, Amen.