In the book of Genesis, 32nd chapter, Genesis
32, I'll read from verse 24 to the
end, a familiar story that I'll read again.
And Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled
a man with him until the breaking of
the day.
And when he saw that he prevailed not
against him, he touched the hollow of his
thigh.
That's when the man who was wrestling with
Jacob perceived that he prevailed not against Jacob.
He touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh, and
the hollow of his thigh was out of
joint as he wrestled with him.
And Jacob said, let me go before the
day breaks.
And he said, I will not let thee
go.
He said that, the wrestling man said, let
me go.
Jacob said, I will not let thee go.
And he said unto him, what is thy
name?
And he said, Jacob.
And he said, thy name shall be called
no more, Jacob, but Israel, for as a
prince hath thou pow'red God unto men
and hath prevailed.
And Jacob asked him, and said, tell me,
I pray thee, thy name.
And he said, wherefore is it that thou
hast asked after my name?
And he blest him there.
And Jacob called the place Hemio, the Nile,
if you like.
This version says Hemio.
For I have seen face to face, and
my life is preserved.
And as he passed over, a new wall
was set upon him, and he haulted upon
his thigh.
And therefore the children of Israel knocked at
the sinew, which shrank, which is upon the
halt of the thigh unto this day, because
he touched on all those things which lie
in the sinew, and it shrank.
Now, the thought, as you have guessed, about
the man Jacob wrestling, and the wrestling God
who wrestled with Jacob, is real.
It's not absent.
Now we have here, content, a story that
is literally filled with meaning.
The Bible is a picture gallery, containing the
portraits of the great saints, and also, I'm
sorry to say, some who are not so
great.
The portraits are here, painted for us, not
by the Spirit, but by the Holy Spirit
himself.
And this man Jacob, we stand before him,
and as we gaze at his portrait, we
suddenly see that it's not only a picture
of a man, it's a mirrored, blurred picture.
And we see ourself in it.
We see our own strength, and our own
weakness here.
And what I'm to say is not to
reproduce upon a man who can't answer back,
nor necessarily to praise a man who might
be a messiah.
We see and learn from this man, long
sleeping with the just, how we can be
better Christians in an age that desperately needs
good Christians.
Now, Jacob was chosen of God.
Jacob had our love, said God, before Jacob
was born, and had done neither good nor
evil.
Jacob had our love.
God chose the man, Jacob, and loved him,
and Jacob was under covenant.
He wanted immediately to act in
the way of God.
He wanted to make the covenant, and he
was under covenant.
And Jacob had had some experience with God,
really had known God, he had seen that
matter, he had heard the voice of God,
and he had promised God that he would,
and he had seen God standing above the
ladder, and the angels descending, ascending and descending
upon the ladder, and therefore he had had
some spiritual experience, really.
He'd had the initial hope, and yet after
20 years of flopping around, trying to outwit
his old father-in-law, and he was
a wasted example of Godliness.
He knew God, and Jacob had such an
unholy nature, and he lacked so many things
that he needed, and he had so many
things that he ought to get.
We have what we ought not to have,
and we don't have what we ought to
have.
We have what we ought not to have.
And that's the man, Jacob.
I have noticed in times, if
you say, who will come?
But if we say, who wants to come?
Well, Christus was facing this man, Jacob, and
at this point, he needed a spiritual overhaul.
He was always just.
He wouldn't have wanted to trust, and
Jacob hadn't bothered.
He needed that.
Then he needed to be worried of his,
and he needed to be rid of that,
I know.
But the father doesn't, because so
God doesn't.
And then Jacob was disturbed, and he needed
a complete, he needed a complete breaking.
People can be very stubborn over trivialities.
That's just, I'm just hearing a horn, and
that helps the radio.
Okay.
I've had so many of these things play
me dirt, because I'm suspicious of them.
I never know what they're going to do.
Well, now, God willed this for Jacob.
I said, and he needed a clean spirit,
and he needed to have an infusion of
water, and he needed a magic filling of
the love of God.
And what was on Jacob's side was that
God, you know, man, if you can preach,
you're always sure that God will.
He willed it, because it's, well,
you could say that any scenic, he
could still.
And so, when God makes a promise, faith
does not write you a letter.
If God could, it
wouldn't mean a thing.
If you wanted to die, I could come
through.
But if you wanted a hundred thousand, you
don't trust his promise.
Man writes me a letter and says,
but if I know that he's a scholar,
that his children should, but
I don't think he always made
you wonder.
Well, I suppose it's because you have faith.
I wouldn't know why else, because the verdict
says that I'll make it.
Yes, you
will make it.
Now, the will of God is a settled,
a gratification that God willed him to make.
It's God's gratification
never again.
And if we were to criticize, because and
gratification never, and
this is all the same.
He willed it.
He willed it, Jacob.
So, God willed that this man, Jacob, should
be right.
And so, he put Jacob in the corner.
I said to somebody, maybe I said, that
it would be a good thing if, to
create our own crisis, you know, to get
our, it wasn't until he was sinking down,
it wasn't, it
wasn't until Paul was struck by, and
God was setting Jacob up, and it says
here, Jacob was left alone.
Jacob had spent all, and the cattle, and
he had a whole lot of folks.
But God separated him from them.
He sent him across, sent him, he's
alone, God.
Then your friends said, you'll never be where
he ought to be.
Here you are alone, and
Jacob was left alone.
Then he began to wrestle with the man,
Jacob, and Jacob resisted God's will, personal
resistance, that all.
If you desire God, you don't desire him,
you won't get anywhere.
You must desire him enough.
And the very thing for which you're praying
sometimes, you're resisting.
That's a strange thing, but it's true nevertheless.
And the problem of the Holy Spirit in
his church, and among his children, all our
history, it is to eliminate resistance in Jacob.
Resistance caused by our sin, or pride, or
ambition, or what?
Then the resistance is gone.
And sometimes we resist when really it's almost
comic.
But in this particular area, they didn't believe
in Jacob.
And there was a young woman, a girl,
they were sold to God.
So finally, and
the evangelist, he said, take it, it's yours,
Reverend, and he paid on my missionary pledge.
So I took it down to the Jew,
screwed that thing in his head, and here
she was, many
of that carried over from me.
And I heard of a man who had
gone down in a well.
There he was, hanging at the end of
a rope.
He felt, he knew that that was the
end, all right, no more.
He thought, well, as long as I can,
he gave himself up, reached his hold on
her.
And when you let go, and you're standing
on this solid rock, there used to be
a dear old lady out home.
I called so many places home, I said,
there used to be a dear old lady,
when she'd see anybody praying at the altar,
with a fist shut, she'd make an oath
to that son of a bitch.
She made an oath to my wife.
Jacob tried to give up.
You can't go to Jericho's
people.
I tell you, it's easy for me to
understand.
Jacob was going through a pretty tough thing
here.
And Esau, he
knew Esau, but he
didn't have much hope.
Well, when God removed Jacob's resistance, there wasn't
much else, and crippled him.
And when he broke Jacob's self-will, and
Jacob accepted God's will, then he clung to
God.
Then God said, you're with Jacob.
He said, he'd been right.
But he didn't need to hang on very
long, and I tell you, that we could
shorten down the length of our waiting very
greatly, if we would surrender and dare to
believe in the goodness of God.
If you will dare to believe that God
has not, he never
intends that you should have anything taken away
from you, finally, except he takes it away
to get it out of your system, and
then gives it back.
He says, whosoever will give up friends, and
in this life, he'll have a hundred to
one.
He'll have and much as
it used to tell about it.
I don't know, I think he made this
story up, but he said there was a
father who had a nice coal chute, a
very beautiful coal chute, and he wanted it,
and one day the Lord said to him,
and the man said, but listen, this is
all of God.
He said, I don't want to give up
my coal chute, but he insisted, God insisted,
and finally the man in the first took
it, and that's always the way it
is.
If you give God the coal chute, you
turn the tail over to the Lord too
much.
And I noticed another thing here, that this
man was transformed and renamed.
He had a new name.
The old name Jacob meant supplanter, and the
new name meant Prince with God.
He got a new name, and his brother
Esau out on the plain there was a
conqueror.
He, God conquered Jacob out of strength.
He conquered Esau by conquering Jacob.
He walked to me
and said, oh God, how could this be?
He said, yeah, he insulted me.
He said, I want you to go back,
and he just hung himself.
We had supper, and he didn't like me,
and the Lord said, the
city of Morgenthau, and he was seeking the
Lord down.
He said, there's a neighbor of mine, and
he said, that neighbor of mine, and he
said, I promise, and he said, I'm
going to do a good time today, so
the next time we make a change from
this, and
he said, I don't know, it's
foolish, rather strange
thing, isn't it?
We'd like to have you chase your enemy
down the street, and have you stand back
there.
He gets after you, and then makes your
friend come around to you, or at least
he makes your friend.
Esau ran him through his arms, and they
welcomed, kissed each other.
They were friends.
God did it by conquering Jacob on the
bank.
But do you know something here?
Now, right here, you dear friend, he carried
the stigma the rest of his life.
Before that, he'd been numb, but
when the Lord got through it, the sinew
of his thighs, God gave him a limp
as a favor, to remember that what was
that risk.
Fifty men were walking along.
He's that kind of fella, you see, in
the belief in the second coming of Christ,
and getting the missions, and living holy, and
he's lived all.
He's a good Christian, and he carries a
little stigma on, the stigma, all the time.
One of the great evangelists of the past
centuries came to Dr. A.
B.
Simpson and said, Albert, if you were to
pray for this sick, you'd be one of
the most popular evangelists.
He said to his friend, I'm going to
keep on praying for the sick.
He said, it's a stigma I'm going to
keep on unmoving.
We've always had that stigma.
People say, oh, those are wise people, they
pray for the sick.
Yeah, you've never heard me preach healing.
I haven't preached divine healing that I know
of ever in my life.
I've told once or twice illustrations about it,
but if anybody wants to think that I'm
a little bit out in the way for
you, because I pray for a man when
he's sick, you have a right to think
it if you want to, but I'm still
going to do it.
And when a saint of the Lord comes
and says, according to James, I want to
be prayed for, I say, all right, according
to James.
And I've seen a lot of them get
well.
I've seen them die.
Not everybody I pray for lives, but I'll
tell you, I went to see a woman
one time.
She was lying in her bed, a relatively
young woman too.
It wasn't her time.
And she said to me, now I want
you to pray for me, Brother Tozer.
I want you to pray and anoint me.
And I said, there's one thing I want
to say.
She said, I don't care whether I live
or die.
She said, I'm happy in God and perfectly
ready to meet the Lord anytime.
And if he wants me to stay alive
with my wife, I'm going to meet him
anytime.
So, either way it goes, it's all right
with me.
And I said to the devil, now, what
am I going to do with her?
If you kill her, she's still happy because
she's going to be with the Lord.
She gets well.
She's happy about that.
As soon as the Lord brings you to
a place where you don't care, and
so I don't, I think we waste a
lot of the Lord, but I still am
happy.
I need healing by prayer, but
I don't make a great deal out of
it, and I don't believe in healing, I'll
tell you that much now.
And in fact, I believe that the pastor
has a right to pray for the sick.
Anyway, keep the stigma on.
Don't be ashamed to it.
Don't be ashamed to have a little bit
of a stigma.
So, Jacob lived.
I quote, when he came out across the
river that morning, he said, the sun shone
on him.
Notice that passage?
Jacob had dimly shadowed most of his nightlife
in those painting cattle.
The sun rose upon Jacob when he walked
out there.
But now the sun rose upon him, and
when the children saw a figure coming along,
from that time on, I
like to think about the change in this
man, Jacob, from the crooked supplanter and trickster
to a dignified.
Remember later on when they went down in,
and this, the great old shevel, the king
of all, he sent for Jacob to come
in.
The old herdsman walked in, and his eye
as bright as ever, upright as he was
now except for a little length, said he
got to Jacob.
He wasn't ashamed or afraid to go into
the presence of royalty.
The young Pharaoh arose and said, bless me,
my father, and the king of the greatest
country in the world will know me.
The old herdsman laid his hands on the
head of the king, and blessed him.
I want to tell you this, and then
I'll be true.
We gave a hundred dollars to bring that
man behind the stage, but it fell through
for some technical reason I don't know about,
and we never got it.
Well, it turned the money over to mission.
But anyway, there is in South Africa, he's
still living there, a man by the name
of D.
U.
S.
Dugan.
He's a blackness here, a well-college student,
a Seward.
Had no education at all, and he got
converted to the Baptist down there, and he
came on to a friend of mine, Dr.
Cook, who is an Afrikaner, white man, and
he said, Dr. Cook, he said, I'm called
Preach.
Here was a Seward, only converted a short
while, without any education at all, and looked
the world down upon, the apartheid you're talking
about over there is strong and all, and
so they looked down on this Seward, and
Dr. Cook said to him, Duma, it's wonderful
that you're saved, and I'm glad you are
and all, but I think you're mistaken about
God calling you to preach.
He said, I'm just a little afraid you're
mistaken about it.
He said, I don't think you are, and
I think you'd better give up the idea.
So, Duma disappeared, and he was gone three
weeks.
Where he was was this.
He'd gone way outside the little city, and
gone up into the hills there somewhere, and
God even came, and without any Bible to
read, for I think he couldn't read at
that time, for three weeks he waited on
the clock.
What happened to him there, I'll never know.
You will never know.
No man can write it, but it happened,
and he came back and said to Dr.
Cook, who's one of the big Baptists of
South Africa, he said, his face now is
a light.
You know how black faith can shine?
He was happy, and he was shining like
that.
He said, Dr. Cook, God met me, and
I know now that I'm called to preach.
He said, if you've got any place I
can preach?
Yeah.
Yeah, they said, if you insist, we have
a place where there's a church with six
members.
He said, would you like to take me?
He said, sure, and he took that church
with six members, and in a very few
years had boomed it up until it was
one of the largest churches in that area,
and he rose from being a black Zulu
that people looked down on, to being a
man that everybody black and white respected in
all the areas of the Union of South
Africa, and they tell me that when the
white people swallowed the black get sick or
in trouble, send for doom, the tall black
boy comes quietly in and kneels down and
talks to the God he knows so well.
God hears prayer and answers for the white
people that don't know God quite so well.
So, you see, my dear people, it didn't
who you are, or what stock you had,
or how much education you had, and what
the color is, and what the denomination is.
It is whether you have or have not
met God in living in God.
It is whether you have or have not
met God and had your will broken before
him, and then the Lord touch you, put
upon you the stigma of the cross, say,
now you're going to be my messenger, my
representative.
Don't be afraid of the shame that comes
and the disgrace that there'll be when everybody
will want you to pray for them.
Who is it you send for?
Who is it you send for when you're
in trouble?
Never for the compromising Christian that's afraid of
the cross.
It's always for the helpless and limp who
has followed the Lord to the cross and
made him lame.
Always send for that kind of man when
you're in trouble.
The world does, because even the sinful old
world doesn't believe in a lukewarm Christian.
Well, that's the story of Jacob, a little
bit of it.
Thank God Jacob ever lived.
I'm glad he ever lived.
I'm glad he was the kind of man
he was.
I'm glad God's the kind of God he
is to make Jacob into the kind of
man he is now.
In order that you and I may take
heart and become better men and women than
we are thus far, Heavenly Father, we thank
thee for all thy good things, all thy
children of every color and every age.
Jacob did well in his days and through
months and later times.
Holy Ann, Sophie the scrub woman and Debbie
Bray, Henry Sousa, John of the Cross, Francis
Harada, oh God, we could name them, the
whole telephone directory filled us full of them.
We had time to listen to the ones
who were shining like stars in the dark
world.
Some of them are gone, some are still
among us, but they shine in the dark
world.
You show forth the glory of him who
called us out of darkness into his light.
We thank thee for every one of them.
Oh God, help us, it were as bad
as Jacob, help us, we pray, to be
humble and to be persistent and to hang
on so long and to believe thoroughly and
to be willing to take the stigma of
a cross-carrying life.
Now with God bless this company of people,
we thank thee for them and we pray
that tonight as we gather that there may
be some who will make specific decisions.
Some young people will be here tonight, probably,
and maybe some who will wander in that
aren't Christians.
We pray for them.
We pray that I'll prepare speakers and singers
and those in charge of musicians and everybody
that there will be unanimity within our spirits
so that the Holy Ghost can without hindrance
lay conviction upon those who need it and
give faith to those who are just desperately
in the shape.
Bless us now we pray thee through Christ
our Lord.
In the book of Genesis, 32nd chapter, Genesis
32, I'll read from verse 24 to the
end, a familiar story, but I'll read it
again.
And Jacob was left alone, and there rustled
a man with him until the breaking of
the day.
And when he saw that he prevailed not
against him, he touched the hollow of his
thigh.
It's when the man who was wrestling with
Jacob perceived that he prevailed not against Jacob.
He touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh, and
the hollow of his thigh was out of
joints as he wrestled with him.