Tonight we turn our Bibles to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and we're going to chapter 32. Again, as I said this morning, we're moving around to a few different passages and then we'll begin some series here week after next. So Genesis chapter 32, it's a wonderful sermon to think about coming to the table next week to think about what the Lord delights in as we come to the table about what He loves to see in the life of his people as we come to the table. And Genesis 32 is here in the heart of the life of Jacob, a wonderful, wonderful figure to study, learning about God's grace and about change. So Genesis chapter 32, let's give our attention to the word of the Lord. Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, this is God's camp. So he called the name of that place Mahanaim. And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother, in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, instructing them. Thus you shall say to my lord Esau, thus says your servant Jacob, I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants and female servants. I have sent to Tell my Lord in order that I may find favor in your sight. And the messengers returned to Jacob saying, We came to your brother Esau and he is coming to meet you. And there are 400 men with him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him and the flocks and herds and camels into two camps thinking if Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, return to your country and to your kindred that I may do you good. I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant. For with only my staff I crossed this Jordan and now I have become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children. But you said, I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. So he stayed there that night. And from what he had with him, he took a present for his brother Esau. Two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, 30 milking camels and their calves, 40 cows and 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys. These he handed over to his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, Pass on ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove. He instructed the first, When Esau, my brother, meets you and asks you, To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you? Then you shall say, They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a present sent to my lord Esau, and moreover, he is behind us. He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves, you shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him, and you shall say, moreover, your servant Jacob is behind us. For he thought, I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me. And afterward, I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me. So the present passed on ahead of him, and he stayed that night in the camp. The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and he crossed the ford of Jabbok. And he took them and sent them across the stream and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, Let me go, for the day is broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. And he said to him, What is your name? And he said, Jacob. Then he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. For you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him, Please tell me your name. But he said, Why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered. The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip on the sinew of the thigh. May the Lord bless the hearing of his word. Well, one of the things that we confess together as Christians that means a whole lot to us, that we hold tightly to, is the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone. And I asked the question last week, I asked the very important question, do we really understand grace? Do we appreciate grace? Do we get grace as we should? I lived in a world where there was a great debate always over grace. And many out of a certain background of the Protestant Reformed would heavily debate grace. And we were constantly debating the meaning of grace. And this seemed to go on indefinitely. But if I were to ask you to define grace tonight, if I were to ask you to give me a basic definition of grace, you would probably say something to me like, well, it's God's unmerited favor. And I would say that's a good way to define it. It's God's kindness. We don't deserve it. There's nothing we've done, there's nothing that we ever have done to earn His favor, to merit that favor. It's all His powerful working. And I would say that's a pretty good way to define it. You've done fairly well. But in what way? In what way? How do you see it? What kind of favor do you get? That's a good question. What kind of favor do you get from God? I become more and more convinced that often today it's so loosely defined and so loosely said that people define grace only in a way that is really comfortable for them in a way that just looks at the mere end of everything. We're saved by grace. We're saved at the end of the day. Our salvation is all by grace. And I say, Amen. Great, that's true. You didn't add a work to it. You never will. But the thing that we rarely stop and do is consider what grace often looks like in the life of the Christian. In the course of the Christian life. What does it look like? We meet God tonight in His grace in an entirely different manner than we would expect. Entirely different manner. In fact, I don't know tonight that what's presented before us is really the kind of grace that we would like or we would like to talk a whole lot about. This grace is a little bit different. At the end of the day, it was rather assaulting. It was crippling. I mean, by the end of this passage, did you notice that Jacob is reduced to a mere doll? He's been put down. He was assaulted by God Himself and forced at the imagery of it all, all you're left with at the end of the passage is a man clinging for his life. Is that grace? The kind of grace I usually think about? Everything in this passage from Jacob is ripped away. Everything's ripped away. And the very painful loss of himself in that very painful loss, in the very experience of that loss of the self, he began to see God's strength. He began to see the power of Christ. I suppose it goes hand in hand with what Jesus said, whoever seeks to save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will preserve it. If we all know that we're never by our own strength going to choose to lose our lives for the Lord, then grace has got to be that way of making it true in us, right? Because I'm not going to choose that. I'm not going to choose it. Grace then, we could say initially, is God's sometimes painful working in us to bring us to nothing that we might be raised a new creature, totally dependent, clinging to His Son and the promises of the Gospel as we go forward. That would be a good place to begin tonight. And so I want you to see that the grace that is being shown to us here tonight, if we are standing in that grace and we begin to see grace as we should, get ready in the course of life for the Lord to cripple you. Get ready for Him to cripple that in the loss of yourself you would begin to gain that which is most important. Genesis 32. It comes to us in the heart of the life of Jacob. What a fascinating figure to study. I love studying the life of Jacob and it really should make us pause when we come to something like the end of Psalm 46 and it says the God of Jacob is our help, that should move us greatly because that is saying this God helped a rebel. A rebel. His name testified of that. His name described just what kind of person this man was. His name meant schemer, deceiver. And his whole life told that story. He was a self-made man. Confident. Always going and progressing in his own strength, his own human ingenuity. He was independent. He was self-sufficient. He was always on the move. And he was always doing things to obtain the blessing himself. Remember, he had schemed. Schemer is his name. He had schemed to steal Esau, his brother's birthright. He had deceived his dying father on his deathbed by putting on Esau's clothing. And again, in a horrible scene, he had obtained all of these things through deception. This is Jacob. He was a rebel. He was a rebel with a cause. His own. And here we are. He has now spent many years away from the promised land. And he has been away from the land. He's pictured here. As a wayward son of Father Abraham, he really is your Old Testament story of the prodigal son. He goes to Haran and he spends all these years with his other side of the family, his other scheming Uncle Laban, and that's just two peas in a pod. That's a fascinating story to study. He's a rebel. And the fact is, through it all, God had been with him. And that's the beauty of what comes out here in the life of Jacob. The Lord had made a promise to Jacob and the Lord had said something absolutely beautiful to Jacob. And as you're studying the life, you have to go back for a minute and consider just what the Lord had said to Jacob in making a promise. You remember that at Bethel? Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth and its top reached to heaven. And there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south. And in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Behold, I am with you and I will keep you wherever you go. and I will bring you back to this land. Now notice what the Lord just said. You're going to go do what you want. I will bring you back. For I will not leave you until I have done what I've spoken to you. Now did you hear that? The whole way I'm going to be with you. Now this is a very rough life of Jacob. And the Lord is making a commitment. The Lord is making a promise which extends back to the promise made to Abraham that the basis of his mercy, the basis of the grace that he would show Jacob had never, ever, ever been dependent upon him. So in these last chapters, he has been held in bondage by Uncle Laban and now he's freed. He's coming home. He's coming back to the promised land. It's a beautiful, exciting moment in the life of Jacob. He's coming back to dad. He's coming back home. and this is every parent's great dream if they have a prodigal. Now what do you expect at this point? What do you expect? Well, something's beginning to happen here. And when we read the text, we see that the Lord is working behind the scenes in a remarkable way. We're seeing it. Jacob is being slowly won. And I want you to notice now what happens. I'm overwhelmed in this narrative of how the Lord continued to remain and how he shows it here. Notice in chapter 32, what we have here is God is coming after Jacob. And what we see coming out is that Jacob has to go through the hard path of repentance. It's really a moving point because oftentimes we think that when the Lord works and when He changes, it's sort of an immediate whiz-bang kind of thing. And here we see what the Lord is doing, that He's slowly working, that He's patient with His Son, with the Son of Abraham, and He is pursuing Him in a way that we would never expect. Look at verse 1. So Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, this is God's camp. And he called the name of that place Mahanaim, literally the double camp. It's a glorious scene. There's a lot of speculation as to just where this is. I have my thought, but I believe this is very close to the border of the land. And what we're picking up here is that God is demonstrating to Jacob, God is showing Jacob that he has never left him. And he sees that with the presence of the angels, which would have been a reminder back to Bethel. But here he is coming toward the land and all of a sudden he sees this double camp. There the angels of God meet with him. God had said he would be with him. The Lord is assuring him of that. But I'm left here thinking, Now, I'm left here thinking, if you look down to the next chapter, chapter 18, Jacob doesn't enter the land until that point. What should strike us is Jacob doesn't enter in this passage. Look at the verse there. The name that comes up hasn't been mentioned here. You'll notice that Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother. He first goes to Edom. Now, that's not on the way. Edom is south. And what is beginning to happen here and what we're beginning to see and what it ought to make us really think about is what the Lord is doing in the life of Jacob. What the Lord is bringing out in the life of Jacob. On his way back home, the Lord is forcing Jacob first to deal with something else. He has to go through the region of Seir. Sarah was the country of Edom and a name comes up that we've not thought a lot about so far in this a name that Jacob had not thought about for years and it's the name of Esau his brother Esau was a powerful lord over the whole region and here's what gets me as I read this the first thing that strikes me is the Lord is making Jacob confront his past you'll notice in verse 3 in the land of Sarah what does he do speak thus to my Lord thus your servant Jacob says I've been with Laban I have oxen, donkeys, flocks and male and female servants I'm giving these things to you I want to find grace in your sight favor now this is a this is a remarkable moment remember because Jacob had cheated his brother for these things. Jacob had stolen. Jacob had cheated his brother for the birthright and for the blessing to be the one who was first. And even so, we believe God gave it to him by sovereign election. God had chosen Jacob. Jacob I've loved. Esau I've hated. But wait a minute. It's a remarkable moment because did you notice the reversal here? I'm the servant. You are first, my Lord. It's a title given to someone with a much greater position. Now Jacob could have avoided this. Jacob could have avoided this by miles. Jacob could have stayed far away from this. And Jacob sends all of these blessings to his brother Esau. He gives all of these gifts to his brother Esau. The very things probably that he had tried to steal. they had had a major falling out and he's giving it back. He's giving it back. Now my natural response to this as I read it is, what are you doing? What are you doing? He doesn't deserve this. Why in the world are you humbling yourself this way before Him? You're the son of promise. Stop that, Jacob. How dare you do that to Esau? I mean, you're totally giving in here. And then I say, this is a man who's walking a path of repentance. Right there we're beginning to see what the Lord is doing. It's real. It's sincere. God will not let this child rest and bring him home. until he has gone and he has reconciled with his brother. This is a big moment. You know how much attention the Bible gives to this? Do you know how much Jesus talked about this? For the true Christian, past sins have consequences, don't they? Sure they do. Many sins have consequences. And God doesn't let it go ignored. He desires for people. He desires for there to be in the hearts and lives of His people forgiveness and the pursuit of reconciliation with a brother. God loves that. He treasures that. He doesn't let people often go forward in life until they pass through the past and make right what needs to be made right. And I'm convinced, I'm convinced that this is a crucial part of the Christian life. This is an integral part of walking with Christ. This is what the Lord has called us to, to become Christ-like and sacrificial. Who the Lord Jesus giving Himself died for the ungodly and died for us while we were yet sinners. And so you see what's happening here. Jacob has humbled himself and doing everything in his power to compensate and make right the wrong. And what an amazing moment. You know, I was talking with a wise elder not too long ago, and he says, you know what happens in the Netherlands when two brothers get in a fight? He says, when two brothers get in a fight, the way that he said, and he was a Dutchman, I'm not, so I'm quoting him, okay? He said, the way they handle it is they refuse to talk to one another. Now, they can be in the pew together. They can sit in the pew together. The elements of the supper can pass by. One might make a statement even. by refusing to partake. And this goes on in the life of the church. So they attend all the activities together. They're a part of the kingdom life together. And yet, they're totally apart from each other. And I said, well, I think to myself, well, that's not a Netherlands problem. That's a human nature problem. The Lord was serious about this. It's meant a lot to our Lord. Right after he taught about prayer, he said something so potent. If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. He said that because one who is truly forgiven by God will be given the power and grace to go forgive, which is the one thing the natural man won't do. And the point here is that when grace comes, there are things of the past that are not over. There are things of the past that have to be dealt with. and going and restoring broken relationships, going and doing what the Lord calls us to do here is difficult, but the Lord desires of us. And you stop sometimes and you say to people who are in nothing but conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict. Do you wonder why? Do you ever stop and wonder why? Now what do I expect at this point? God's brought him out, bringing him back home. God has assured Jacob of his presence that he loves him, that he will not leave him, that God's going to do every good word that he promised. This was one of his children. Jacob's probably feeling a little bit good at this point. Where's the red carpet? Verse 6. Then the messengers returned to Jacob saying, We came to your brother Esau. And he is coming to meet you and 400 men are with him. The next thing you read is Jacob is deathly afraid. 400 men is an army in those days. An army is coming behind Esau and he's coming on the war path. That's the picture you have here. Now you have to put yourself in his shoes for a moment. Is this what doing right produces? you have the first recorded prayer of Jacob in the Scriptures at this point. And I marvel at this prayer. I stand back from this prayer and I think, what an amazing moment. Listen to the humility that's birthed here. Look at verse 9. O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the Lord who said to me, Return to your country and to your family and I will deal well with you. I'm not worthy. Think of Jacob. Think of his life. I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which you have shown to your servant. For I crossed over this Jordan with my staff and now I've become two companies. Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, For I fear him, lest he come and attack me and the mother with the children. For you said, I will surely treat you well and make your descendants as the sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for multitude. Hear it? I'm not worthy. Smaller and smaller and smaller he's getting. I'm worse than Esau. You made promises. You spoke. you said you'd be with me. Deliver me. That's his prayer. It's interesting, the Jewish writings, and obviously we read them as history, but one of the writings says that the Jews believed that the Lord sent these angels down to Esau and appeared to Esau as 2,000 men were riding on horses and war chariots and scared Esau. And he backed off. That's what the Jews believed. Whatever the case, here's what we have in verse 22 he arises in the night so here's the scene he has sent away his wives he sends away his female servants his sons are away from him and this sheep is all alone in the wilderness and if you've ever been in the wilderness tonight there's no lights it's complete blackness everything has been removed from him he is in total fear and the aloneness of this whole thing, that the pain of being alone must have overwhelmed him. The consequences of the past are here now in front of him, which he can barely bear. And what would I expect from God at this moment? He's just prayed, help me, Lord. Deliver me from Him. I look to You. You made a promise to me. I trust You. What do you expect from the Lord? You're going to say, Y'all, okay, we're used to this by now. We expect grace from Him. Amen. I do too. That's how He is. What do you think you need at this moment? You're out in the middle of the wilderness. An army's coming to attack you. You're all alone. Well, you expect God to come sing nice songs to you? What do I want the Lord to do for you? You say, deliver. I say, amen. Deliver. That's what Jacob prayed. Deliver me. Verse 24. Then Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. The blackness of the night. He's scared. Can't see a thing. Someone lays hold of him. And this is not anything light. This is a physical assault in the middle of the night. This is scary. Middle of the desert, all alone, someone's trying to kill you. This is no high school wrestling match. Someone lays hold of you and they're trying to take your life. This is, think of it, the pounding, the shoving, the hitting, the pulling, the gouging. All until morning, a seven hour fight. Imagine the thirst. Everything's come down on him. And whoever this is, the fight continues. And he reaches out his hand and he touches the hip socket of Jacob. And Jacob goes limp. All of his power is taken away in the hips. You can't wrestle that way. And the imagery you have in verse 26 is all that he could do was cling. For the man said, let me go for the day breaks. Jacob is holding on for life. He won't let go. Who was this? Million dollar question. Well, shall we recognize this is a theophany, the angel of the Lord. God invisible. Here, Christ has met him. And he assaults him. And he cripples him. And then what does our Lord do to him? In verse 26, the question is, let me go for day breaks. Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. So he said to him, what is your name? Now, do you notice that question? In the biblical world, when you were asked that kind of question, names we don't think much about today, but names meant everything in the biblical world. You're revealing something about you. You're revealing something about your character. You're stating who you are and His name. We know what it means by now. So we see what the Lord is still doing to Jacob. He has stripped him of everything. And Jacob, in total fear here, he has taken now all of his strength away. And now he's attacking His name. And in doing that, he made Jacob confess, I am a schemer. Think about it. I confess that I am a deceitful man. And right then and there, this man pronounced a new name. And there's a long history that went before that when the Lord had changed Abram's name to Abraham. And he said in verse 28, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. For you have struggled with God. There it is. Now we know who it is. And with men. And have prevailed. You shall be called Israel. There's a lot of debate over the meaning of Israel. It's been really interesting to do reading on the name of Israel. But it can rightly be defined. It can rightly be understood as meaning God contended or God prevails. You ever think about that? God prevails. Here's what I believe the Lord was doing that day. Here's what the Lord was teaching this man. It's in the very end of ourselves, the loss of ourselves, that a great victory is achieved. It's in the very putting down of us is where the victory comes. And that, beloved, is the mystery of the Christian life. That is the hardship, if you will, of sanctification. The challenge of it as we grow. As we are put to death. And as we go on being solely killed daily to ourselves. And God prevails here. That's the message of grace. That God prevails daily in the life and the hearts of His people when he justifies them and he sets them apart to him and daily he is conquering to conquer. Bringing an end to them that Jacob's whole life, which had been a rebel life, whose life had been in its own power, by the end of it all, all you have the imagery of here is that he can cling. That's it. That's all he can do. Cling. And in that weakness is the victory. God shattered the strength of this man. He took everything of it away. Jacob's whole life, think about it. Think of the whole life here. Jacob's whole life had been a struggle with men, with God, with deceiving a brother, with deceiving a father, with deceiving an uncle. Conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict. Always on the run. Always doing his own thing. Always doing that in his own self-sufficiency. Bringing himself only misery. And God conquered him that day. And the story of Jacob is your story. And it's my story. No strength in himself. Clinging to Christ. What an amazing scene. The grace that we receive is crippling. when He lays a hand on the source of our pride and He dislocates it, and the moment that we come and we realize just how weak we really are, how unworthy we really are, how incompetent we really are, that anything we have has always been by His grace, anything that we do is always by His strength, that the only thing we have left is to cling to the promises of Christ, That is where we see Him most powerfully and effectively working the most in us. When you're there and when you're experiencing this, it may not be fun. It's no longer about exercising your rights. I always say your rights are done when you become a Christian. It's about Christ in us. It's about showing Him. the one who would go to the garden of Gethsemane for me, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, that I might become a new creature in him. That he would humble himself to that kind of degree that I would be lifted up and given the victory. If he wants me to demonstrate that kind of forgiveness that I've received to somebody else who I don't like, you know what my response should be? Bring it on. I would love to show Christ that way. The posture of the Christian is a limping one, isn't it? What did they say about Hitler? He used to write and Bonhoeffer used to talk about this. This is what he hated about Christianity. It's so weak. It's for weak people. And I say, Amen. I am weak. You are weak. we walk with a limping the whole hip joint out of socket and when Christ does that when He does that He brings us to a place where our strength is found in Him what a wonderful perspective as we come to the supper next week we may have to go through Sarah this week I don't know you know it will be a miserable journey until you do and after that the Lord will still deal with you. But in His relentless grace and love, He doesn't let go. And tearing away at your hip socket, He makes a promise to you. Attacking that strength, the lower you go, the weaker you become. The lower you go and all of your strength is attacked and all of your pride is emptied. In that kind of position of clinging, There, the power of Christ rests upon you. Amen. O Lord our God, we are so thankful that You care to instruct us and that You care to teach us about Your working in us. You love Your people and that You care that we do walk in holiness. Especially as we come to declare next week the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ for us when we didn't deserve it. Who gave His life that we might live and now we are given as we are dislocated and all of our strength is ripped away. As we cling to You and Your promises, we are given the strength to go do what we can't do in our own power. But when that power rests upon us, You teach us, You help us to love as we have been loved. Thank You for Your care and thank you for a wonderful Lord's Day to be in your house and be instructed in your word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.