And now notice verse 9.
What does he do now?
He appeals to God in his distress.
And Jacob said, O God of my father
Abraham, God of my father Isaac, the Lord
which said unto me, Return unto thy country
and to thy kindred, and I will deal
well with thee.
I am not worthy of the least of
all the mercies, and of all the truth
which thou hast showed unto thy servant.
For with my staff I passed over this
Jordan, and now I am become two bands.
This is Jacob.
And this man now appeals to God, cries
out to him on the basis of that
he's the God of his father Abraham and
the God of his father Isaac.
And I begin now to detect a little
change in his life.
This is the first time I've ever heard
him say, I'm not worthy of the least
of thy mercies.
Here he, for the first time, is acknowledging
that he might be a sinner in God's
sight.
You know, we've got a lot of fundamentalists,
but I don't think they've acknowledged they are
sinners for years.
I had a man that wrote me quite
a lengthy letter.
He was incensed that I would indicate that
he's a sinner.
And he told me what all that he
had done, and that he'd been saved, and
he now was not a sinner.
I bet he is.
May I say to you, we're all sinners
saved by grace.
And as long as we're in this life,
we've got that old nature that isn't even
fit to go to heaven.
And you know something else?
It's not going to heaven.
God's not going to let it go.
Well, Vernon McGee can't go there.
That's the reason he had to give me
a new nature.
The old one wasn't even fit to repair.
And so this boy is beginning now to
say he's not worthy.
And when any man begins to move toward
God on that basis, he'll find that God
will communicate with him.
And he makes this very interesting statement that
he says, I went over this Jordan here
just with his walking stick, my staff.
That's all he had.
Now he's coming back and he's got two
bands.
This is Jacob for you.
And now will you notice, listen to him,
verse 11.
Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand
of my brother, from the hand of Esau.
For I fear him, lest he will come
and smite me and the mother with the
children.
And I tell you, he really cried out
to God.
And that night was a very difficult night
for him.
And he didn't have any aspirins to take
that night.
It was difficult.