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00:00 of preaching through Genesis. Um, we've looked at the life of Abraham. We looked
00:06 at the creation of the world. Uh, we've looked at the life of Jacob. The last bit is actually Joseph. All right. So,
00:12 but we are saving the Joseph for last. So, we'll be doing that probably end of the year. So, I'm going to break off
00:19 from March onwards to do something topical prop practical. It'll be the book of James where a lot of uh exciting
00:26 practical uh guidelines of how we live our Christian lives. And we're going to And so today we end off the life of
00:34 Jacob in this climactic difficult issue of what happened to him
00:41 at the the river Jabok. Um before we do so let's pray. Father we ask oh Lord
00:47 that um you fill up our hearts with your holy spirit. You open up our hearts to
00:53 be um your hearts to be soft uh to be penetrated by the spirit. So this day
00:59 that we learn what it is to fight for our lives as we struggle with ourselves, we struggle with your Holy Spirit, we
01:06 struggle to learn to be submissive and to honor you. If we ask for Jesus' sake, amen.
01:12 The uh topic is wrestling with God. Um and basically what I want to do is take
01:18 from this passage which our sister Leeling has so aptly read. Three points very simple. Uh one is wrestling is a
01:25 personal encounter with God. uh to break through a curse when we move from trying
01:30 to overcome to refusing to let go. And thirdly, brokenness comes from blessing,
01:36 comes before blessing. Wrestling is a personal encounter with God. Look at the background. Uh the background to this
01:44 episode where wrestling occurs is that we have the brothers. Okay? One is Esau,
01:49 one is Jacob. Jacob's been away for 20 years. The reason why he's got to go away is because he cheated his brother
01:56 Esau of his birthright. All right. So therefore, he tricked the brother um by
02:03 by take tricked the father actually by taking the brother's blessings. All right. Under disguise. And there was
02:09 great enmity. Esau threatens and will not live until he kills Jacob. Jacob has
02:15 to run away from this stealing of blessing. The entire family is totally fractured. He goes off for 20 years uh
02:22 to live elsewhere in Haran. And now he's coming back. He's coming back to face
02:28 the brother who is getting ready to kill him. I mean 20 years the temple hasn't gone down. Revenge hasn't diminished.
02:34 He's coming back to face this vendetta and um he sends some messengers to Esau
02:41 and they came back and they said these words. The messengers returned to Jacob saying we came to your brother Esau and
02:47 he's coming to meet you. Yeah. And there are 400 men with him. And Jacob was greatly afraid and greatly distressed.
02:52 Why would you come with 400 men, right? That's a bit too big for a welcoming
02:58 party. So Jacob knows that through the years that rage, that white hot anger is
03:05 unddeinished. He's going to come back and face this. Um, and yet why doesn't
03:12 he say, "Okay, let's stay back in Haran. I think at least Laban doesn't want to kill me. I might as well go to face him,
03:18 you know. I mean, he, you know, he he he he cheats me, but at least he doesn't kill me. But here is the struggle. He
03:24 gets this. Let's look at Genesis 32:9. It says, "Oh, Jacob said, oh God," this
03:30 is his prayer. "Oh God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, oh Lord, who said to me, return to your
03:36 country and to your kindred that I may do you good." He's actually commanded to go back to his own country by God. And
03:44 God promises to do him good. But on the other hand, his brother is going to kill him. So therefore, please deliver me
03:50 from the hand of my brother, from the hand of yourself, for I fear that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the
03:55 children. And he claims the promises of God says, but surely uh you said, I surely will do you good and make your
04:02 offspring at the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for a multitude. So the struggle is you want to obey God's
04:07 commandment, but obeying God's commandment, you might get yourself killed. It's a very uh difficult decision. So he
04:14 he um breaks up his family into two camps. He sends them across the Jabok
04:20 river. He remains behind and Jacob was left alone that night. He sends
04:27 everybody away and he wants to spend time with God and he was left alone. And basically um you know we need to
04:35 understand that we always need to meet God alone. Sometimes we come to a big church, we we love the fellowship, we
04:43 love the fun, we're enthused and encouraged by the faithfulness of your friends, your preachers, your youth
04:50 pastor. Um, and you take it in for the moment and then suddenly when you go off
04:55 to university or college and you're all alone and you find you don't attend church anymore that often, the spark
05:02 seems to have been diminished. And sometimes we're actually in a church in
05:07 Christian fellowship. We're overshadowed by God and his greatness, but we're not actually penetrated in our hearts. And
05:14 that's a common experience for many, many young people. That's why when they go off, the worst part is that they
05:19 could be in Sunday school right up to youth. But when they go off to university is when they actually move off. You know
05:26 why? Because they are overshadowed but not penetrated. They don't have a personal encounter with God. All of us
05:31 at some stage needs to meet God alone
05:36 in the quietness of the night. Uh this is gen this is a uh um very famous
05:42 actress uh Jennifer Gardner and she um actually shared this testimony after she
05:48 made this new show uh movie called the miracles from heaven recently. She says
05:54 you know it seems strange I grew up going to church every Sunday of my life.
05:59 When I move did move to LA, it wasn't something that was just part of the culture in the same way, at least in my
06:05 life. But it didn't mean that I lost who I was. But there was something about
06:10 doing this film and talking to my kids about it and realizing that they were looking for the structure of church
06:16 every Sunday. So it was a great gift of this film. It took us back to finding
06:21 our local Methodist church and going every Sunday. It was really sweet. And
06:26 you can see in Jennifer Gardner's life, church is about structure. Church is
06:31 about culture. So when she moved to LA, you know, nobody in LA goes to church. So that that culture is lost. And here
06:37 you actually have a person who is basically overshadowed by the power of God in the environment of church. He goes to church every Sunday, but there's
06:44 no real penetration of a heart. There's no personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Today when we talk about wrestling with
06:50 God, we're talking today about whether we have been penetrating our hearts with
06:55 God. Whether we have wrestled with God in our own lives. It's not enough to come to Sunday or alpha or gamma all the
07:02 time and and you take in all that theology. But in the quietness, the stillness of your room, do you know God?
07:09 Does he strike a chord in your life? So that's the struggle we need to look at. Do you know that the most important
07:15 issues in life you actually face alone? It's nice. You see a lot of friends who come to Sububang Hospital where I see
07:22 them uh and and they get visited, friends who come and bring fruit basket. They say nice things. We'll come and
07:28 pray for you. We'll do whatever for you. But when you go to operating theater, you go in alone. You can't take your
07:36 wife with you. You can't take your baby with you. When you go under the knife, the knife cuts you and you alone. And so
07:43 before therefore you understand that the greatest issues in life are always experienced alone. And this is
07:50 experience which Jacob has to struggle with God alone. Let's look at a time he
07:56 had breakthrough. The breakthrough from his wrestling occurs when he moves from
08:01 trying to overcome to refusing to let go. That's a that's a huge difference. And I'm going to explain this part uh to
08:07 us. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. Suddenly, you
08:14 know, he's at the river Jabok side at the riverside and suddenly a man comes up and he wrestles with him, you know,
08:21 you know, all night, you know, which he he until the breaking of day. Is this a
08:26 dream? How many of you think it's a dream? Put your hands up. Yeah. How many dreams you wake up with a
08:32 broken hip? Cannot. The broken hip is absolute evidence. I know you fell off and then
08:39 you somehow fractured your hip. But uh it is a real event and the Bible describes a wrestling match. A man
08:46 wrestled with him until the breaking of day. But who is this man? And we're
08:51 worried who is this man that he wrestles with the whole day that's so powerful that he can break his hip. uh and Jacob
08:58 answers this question by the end of the wrestling match was saying I have seen God face to face and yet my life has
09:06 been delivered. So obviously it is God in the form of man maybe the angel of the Lord whom he wrestles with all
09:13 night. So he has actually had an encounter with God and the and and and and the the funny thing is that is when
09:20 God smacks you down here you actually have a situation where where Jacob is in
09:25 a frail state. He after 20 years of building up his fortune, building up his family, he's going back and now his very
09:34 life is threatened. The threatened his life of his entire family is threatened. I think most of us will feel very tender, isn't it? And you want God to
09:41 come and say, "It's okay, Jacob. It's okay, Chuchang. I'm going to encourage
09:46 you. Never mind. No scared. Don't worry." And instead, you know, come and God come and smack you down. He doesn't
09:53 say he wrestled with God. You know, it says the man wrestled. Maybe he was jumped by a man. A man attacked him. God
09:59 attacked him. He said this benevolent nice God. You always wonder. God is always there. He's always waiting for
10:06 you. We take him for granted and he comes and say, "It's okay, David. It's okay. It's Suzanne. It's fine, isn't it?" But here, God comes and smacks you
10:13 down, wrestles you down, pins you down. That's scary, isn't it? God takes a life
10:19 of his own, you know. Uh um and uh and and wrestling is actually a picture of his life. If you look as he wrestles all
10:25 night, what would be going through his mind? His whole life goes fleeting
10:31 through his mind. I mean, how many of you have had a moment of danger when your whole life flashes before you? It's really true. I once was in a flat when I
10:38 was 18 years old in Sydney and the middle of night, a huge Australian man
10:43 bomb fell into my balcony, totally naked. What freaked me out. And
10:50 at that moment of time, you know, uh um you actually have your whole life flash
10:55 before you right from your young when you were born, you fought your mother and brother and all it flashes before
11:01 you. I don't know how many of you had that kind of experience. It does flash. And here he he actually been attacked by someone and you didn't know whether he's
11:07 going to live through the night. And obviously the flashing goes across your mind how he he wrestled and you look at
11:12 his life right from the beginning right in the womb of his mom. He's fighting with his brother. His brothers comes out, he grabs his heel, pull him back.
11:19 How many kids do that? You can't remember. And then he steals the blessing from his brother by, you know,
11:26 tricking him by giving him a bowl of soup. He cheats his father. His his
11:31 whole life is based on the lie. He he steals uses his own effort and ingenuity
11:37 in order to steal a blessing. And when he steals a blessing, in the end, the family is shattered.
11:43 Bittersweet, isn't it? You get what you want, but the consequences are so bad. His name is called the suppler. the one
11:49 who connives and cheats and then God teaches him a lesson. He wants the girl of his dream and he gets the ugly sister
11:55 and he to work 14 years. This is and then suddenly realizes he's wrestling.
12:00 He's actually wrestling with whom? He's wrestling with God. Every time he thinks this is what I want in my life. I try to
12:08 get it with my own effort and I can't. The frustration is actually because God is the one who's been wrestling with him
12:14 all his life. Now he wrestles with him through the breaking of day. How many of you ever wrestled competitively or in
12:22 school in No. Yeah. It's only two minute rounds, you
12:27 know, and you only had three rounds. You cannot wrestle all night. There is no
12:32 wrestler who can wrestle all night. Okay, WWF is only two minutes or three minutes in about three rounds because
12:39 it's so much energy. Why does he wrestle all night? And then here if the situation is wrestling with God,
12:45 shouldn't God basically smack him down and kill him straight away? So God somehow allows him to wrestle all night
12:52 because Jacob is a stubborn fellow and he has to wrestle all night until all
12:58 his his energy is dissipated and he really can't take it anymore. Uh you know, so God actually is a lot bigger
13:04 than that. That's the biggest picture I could find. And for you to to to to
13:09 basically wrestle all night with a guy like that. The guy like that must give you chance, isn't it? And yet he
13:15 wrestles. God, you know, God is not weak, but God allows him to wrestle with him all night because Jacob has to work
13:21 through his issues. And this happens in his grandfather's life. If you look in Abraham's life, he wrestled all the way
13:28 up to Mount Mariah. Why does he wrestle? He wrestled with a love for his son and love for God. And the two are almost
13:35 incompatible. has got to wrestle as he climbs up. Here's a wrestling moment. Look at Job wrestles with God.
13:41 Therefore, I will not restrain my mouth. I will speak in anguish of my spirit. I complain of the bitterness of my soul
13:46 when his riches were taken away. When his health was taken away, when I said
13:52 my bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint. Then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions.
13:59 God has become a terrifying God to him. But if you look into the life of Job and
14:04 you see some reason why he possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of
14:10 axon, 500 female do donkeys, many servants. So that this man was the
14:16 greatest of all the people in the east, a little bit more money than Donald Trump.
14:21 And if you look at that, you can see what problem Job had. Job had a lot and
14:28 he loved all of this, right? Oh my 7,000 cattle. Oh my, you know, and then he's
14:34 so careful. Job would send and consecrate them, his children, and would rise early in the morning and offer
14:40 burnt offerings according to the number of them. For Job said, "It may be my children have sinned and cursed God."
14:46 Wow. He gives offering before they sin. Before they sin, he's giving offering.
14:51 So this guy is protecting his turf by accessing God. The question is, is
14:58 his faith in God and God alone or because God gives him all this blessing and then the devil comes in it? The
15:04 devil comes and tests him. Is this love for God by itself? Does it stand on its
15:10 own is because or is he just guarding his turf? He's got an idol in his life. At the end of all that suffering, he
15:17 comes and he says these words. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you and therefore I
15:23 despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. That's a conclusion. After all
15:29 that, he learns one thing that he is worse than what he thinks he is. And he repents in dust and ashes. Wrestling
15:36 produces self-discovery. You don't know how sinful you are. You don't know how far away from God you are until you
15:43 wrestle with God. Otherwise, you think you're fine. Uh Paul, so to keep me from being conceited because of the
15:50 surpassing greatness of revelation, a thorn was given to me in the flesh. A messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep
15:55 me from being conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this and that is that it should leave me. So he wrestled with God because of this thorn.
16:02 It comes right inside here is wrestling to take it out, but God says leave it there. Why? Because if it's not there,
16:08 you will be too conceited. So we actually wrestle to produce self-discovery to understand that we're
16:14 actually more sinful than we think we are. Take a look at the example of the apostle Peter.
16:20 Though everybody will deny you, I will be hero. I will never deny you. Right?
16:26 And Jesus turns around and says to him, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to have you that he might sift you like
16:32 wheat that I have prayed that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again to strengthen your brothers, he
16:37 will be sifted like wheat. He struggles. He wrestles with God because that part of his life that has to be broken is
16:45 that part of pride that has to be broken. So God wrestles with you to produce uh self-nowledge and then he
16:51 said to him the end wrestling match what is your name? You think God doesn't know his name
16:57 after wrestling wrestling say actually what's your name? I forgot I I've been wrestling wrong guy. Oh Mark rather than
17:03 Jacob. Excuse me. Sorry. Why does he do that? He does that because you know what his
17:10 name is? Jacob. Jacob means what? Suppler. Boon. Useless fell, conniver, schemer.
17:19 You see? So therefore, in order to uh uh knowing God involves knowing yourself. Only when you know yourself can you have
17:26 transformation. You won't accept who you are. And so therefore, God has to wrestle you to the ground. We all think
17:31 we're great, isn't it? We look, oh, fantastic. I know I grew up in church. I'm a sinner. But actually I'm a good
17:38 sinner. I'm a respectable sinner. Story was told of a church not unlike ours. An
17:44 uppaty church, you know, upper middle class church where an elderly man went there.
17:50 He was dressed in the most disheveled of clothes. He smelled of alcohol and he sat down on the first row some more. And
17:57 then the usher or the deacon came by and say, "Hey, excuse me, brother. Why are you here?" "Well, I've been praying. God
18:03 tells me to come to your church." Then the deacon says to him, "Don't know whether it was chuch or not, but uh
18:10 you know you should pray a little bit uh more maybe God will give you a different answer you know implying and go home."
18:17 So he went home and he prayed a little bit more and and then he came back the next week the usher was you know the deacon was very upset you know but he
18:23 came back again uh uh did you pray or not? Yes I prayed I prayed to the Lord and and Lord gave me a different answer.
18:30 Yeah he told me son don't worry that they don't want you in this church. I've been trying to get in this church for a
18:36 long time. I never got into. So, so you you you think you think
18:42 you're better than what you are. Uh if you look at the story of the um the lady
18:47 with alabaster jars, isn't it? She's a prostitute and she comes of all she he
18:53 sits in the house of Simon the the tech the the the the the
18:58 Pharisee I think and and he doesn't even wash his feet. And this woman comes who is a prostitute and she breaks the
19:06 alabaster dash. She cries and her tears clean the dirt off Jesus' feet and she
19:12 the life savings of one year from the alabaster jash. She just pours in Jesus Christ. Why is that happening? You know
19:17 what she says? Therefore I tell you her sins which are many are forgiven for she love much but he who is forgiven little
19:23 loves little. The whole idea is that we don't know how awful we are. We don't know how evil we are. So our dedication
19:30 to God why I'm a good sinner. So that your love to God very little, right?
19:35 It's when you realize how far you are, how destitute you are, how poor you are, then the magnitude of his love becomes
19:41 magnified and you understand how he had what it took for him to hang on the cross for you. And so therefore,
19:47 wrestling involves God telling you, impressing upon your heart how awful,
19:52 how horrible, how wretched you are. And unless you come to a place where God wrestles you to the ground and shows you
19:58 that, then the the flames of your devotion cannot flicker because they don't have any fuel to to burn up on.
20:06 And a key moment is he touched his hip socket. The word in Hebrew is just touch
20:12 on, you know, God just had to touch his hip socket. It was out of joint and it's horribly painful. Um, and that's that's
20:19 the basically the key moment. Um, you know, after a while you wrestle with real a few times, you know, God is
20:26 basically fed up. You know, this guy is never going to stop, right? So, in the end, he smacks you down basically. Um,
20:33 you know, Andrew Bonard tells of a um in Scotland what they do is that when they
20:39 look for sheep, okay, the sheep often get lost and they're getting themselves into really bad situations like this at
20:44 the cliff. And you thought when the the shepherd finds the sheep that he would quickly run down and you know absel down
20:51 and save him with a helicopter or whatever. But they don't. They actually let the sheep sit there for a long time
20:57 because if you were to go down straight away, the sheep is very clever. He'll just jump and he thinks he can fly and
21:02 the sheep will die. So he waits until the sheep is very weak and almost uh collapsing. Then you come down and then
21:09 when you grab the sheep, the fellow will be really uh grateful for you and you'll take him away. And it's like human nature, isn't it? We have to wrestle
21:16 until every ounce of strength is lost and then we turn to God and we say I
21:21 surrender. I surrender. We got a nice song called I surrender. I don't like this word of surrender because here
21:27 Jacob did not surrender. How many think Jacob surrendered? He didn't surrender. Surrender implies
21:35 passivity. Okay, God you you take you you take over. I I give up already. God
21:41 doesn't want that. Look at what he did. He goes from fighting God, which is opposing, insisting on your own goals
21:47 and your own blessing, to hanging on to God, acquiescence to his will, insisting on God's blessing rather than your own
21:54 blessing. There's a transformation. There's a whole change of attitude. There's a change of position. Um it's
21:60 it's like a reflex. Some of you will have babies like Harvard,
22:05 you got a new baby, right? You try this trick. You grab your baby and let him fall down. That's called a moral reflex.
22:11 Whenever you threaten the baby like that, right? Newborn you drop you can see the two arms will come out
22:16 automatically it's instinctive when you have danger god has put into this instinct called a moral reflex your baby
22:22 don't do that there's something wrong with your baby you better bring it to hospital it's inbuilt into every single baby the
22:29 moment a threat comes you drop developing it come like that why because maybe uh it's a it's a a primordial
22:36 instinct to self-preservation and Jacob made a vow in the past this
22:42 his relationship with God. If God will be with me and keep me in the way I go and give me bread to eat and where so I
22:50 come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God. This sounds like a lot of people in some churches, you know. If God will give me
22:56 money, if God gives me a job, if God me good health, then I will become Christian, I come to church kind of
23:03 second level kind of faith. Then he he's grown with his sufferings and you know I
23:09 have served your father with my strength all my strength yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages 10 times
23:16 but God did not permit him to harm me. You see God has taken away the livestock
23:21 your father and given them to me. There is some progression in his faith. Then he comes to a place where he wrestles
23:28 with God and he says I have seen the face god face to face and yet my life
23:34 has been delivered. He has a personal encounter with God. And when they personally encountered God, he says, "I
23:39 will not let you go until you bless me." Wow. From keeping God at an arm's
23:47 length. Now he comes and say, "Oh, I'm clinging on. I won't let you go until
23:52 you bless me." And Psalm 34:37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and
23:58 he will give you the desires of my heart." I must confess to you when I was young I totally misunderstood this
24:06 verse. He didn't tell you to obey God and then he will give you desires of
24:12 heart. I used to think you know just before my exams I would go to church very religiously even on Saturday. So
24:18 that if I obeyed God then he will give me my desires of my heart. Seven A's 15 A's. Don't we do that? Right. But the
24:26 trick in this psalm it says it doesn't say you see if it says obey. There was a rich young ruler the older brother they
24:32 all obeyed it. Doesn't they obey? Yeah. But the whole idea in this psalm is that
24:38 it gives yourself I will not let you go unless you bless me. It's the same thing as delight yourself in the Lord and he
24:44 will give you the desires of your heart. You see that's the difference. It's not outward obedience. It is understanding
24:50 that your life depends on God and that you want him to bless you of all the things in the world that makes you
24:57 happy. This makes your day. When you come to a place in your life when this makes your day all you ever
25:04 wanted is the smile of God, the touch of God in your life, then he will give you
25:09 the desires of your heart. And what's your desire of the heart? New game boy. No, your game boy is
25:18 actually God, you understand that, right? So, it's a spiritual
25:23 transformation when you come to this stage where you will learn and tell God, you will I will cling on until you bless
25:31 me. This is a few points put out by Charles Finny who lived 200 years ago.
25:38 And what does it mean to delight yourself in the Lord? It means God is a center of your affection. Not your
25:44 Mercedes-Benz or your Lamborghini, not even your wife. It is God who is the
25:50 center of your affection. You desire communion. You desire to to talk to him.
25:55 You actually look forward to the second second coming of Christ. How many of us actually look forward? You wake up next
26:01 morning. I first thing you check is Dow Jones.
26:06 Second thing you check is weather. Third thing you check whether the fer got caught with $2.6 billion. whether his
26:12 day has come in court and whether the the the the pack report is out and you check your Malaysia kinney and all this
26:18 that's what I do actually all right your desire for for communion eternal
26:24 union with him satisfaction to him a lot of things you know we fill ourselves so many artificial substitutes
26:32 and we we try riches we try sex we try partying we try so many things and you
26:38 go after the 15 country you visit all the same one I'm going to say hotel eat the food and then you come home
26:44 and you actually realize that you need to find true satisfaction in him. Confidence in him when trials come you
26:51 all you have is confidence in him. glad submission to him. not coming say oh God I surrender okay I go to church
26:57 I I might come to gamma maybe maybe and I and you come
27:03 unwillingly God doesn't want you to God wants you glad submission and and deep
27:09 interest in his glory and his honor rather than your own when you come to this place this is the
27:16 breakthrough this is the breakthrough when you actually desire God you can you know a lot of us can come to church we can sing we can give tithing we could
27:23 attend And we can even go for a seminar. We can read the Bible. But unless you come to a place where you delight in
27:28 God, when he excites you, when he burns in the core of your being,
27:34 don't tell me, "Oh, I'm going to surrender to you God tomorrow." I be like, "Mo, become full-time worker." Okay. Okay. You got me. You got me, God.
27:41 Okay. I give chance. I'll go to America, become missionary. That's not what I mean. You got to come
27:48 to a place in your life when you wrestle with God. when the breakthrough occurs when you say I only want you
27:55 and you alone and if you haven't come to that place in your life my friend sitting here after six years in this
28:01 church then you might not come to a place where you actually call a child of God a child
28:06 of God will yearn for God will look forward to seeing his mommy
28:13 and father you know how can you say oh I got to go and see mom and dad you can't do that and that's the
28:20 breakthrough that we're looking at brokenness comes before blessing
28:25 his life and he says he found he touched his hip socket. He was put out of joint
28:31 and the moment you know that's the moment of of of epiphany for Jo Jacob.
28:36 He wrestles all night but the moment it hits him is when his hip comes off then
28:42 he realizes that he's going to cling on rather than fight God. You see we need pain for transformation. Um, you know,
28:50 Joseph, his son, goes through the same thing is that God has to deal with us to actually break us. You see, the
28:56 wrestling can go all night for three weeks, you know, but God has to break you. And for us, he has to break us. So,
29:04 Joseph grew up as a young child with a great vision that everyone want to bow before him full of pride. God put him in
29:11 the hole, you know, a slave, not 12 years, 13 years, a slave. Then he became a prime minister.
29:18 If you look at uh Moses, prince of Egypt, he goes in the backside of the
29:24 desert on a murder charge for 40 years. After 80 years old, God says, "Okay,
29:30 time to come out of the hole. Now I can use you." Why does God break us? God
29:36 breaks us because they're so full of ourselves and the self-independence that we cannot be used by God. So before God
29:43 can use you, he's got to break you. And that's every single one of us here.
29:48 We have to be broken. We cannot be used of God until we're broken. It may take one year, may 10 years, it may take 40
29:55 years. Paul, persecutor of Christians. What did
30:02 God do to break him? Damascus road a vision. He was blind. He was blinded.
30:09 That breaks him. The Lord said to him, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the
30:15 Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for my sake." The suffering
30:22 is a breaking of a Christian. If you're unwilling to suffer, you are unwilling to be broken. You will not come into
30:29 blessing. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and he saves the crushed
30:34 in spirit. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and save the crushed in spirit. You know
30:40 sometimes when anal likes to do this he has this uh altar call people come up then they cry and there are some of you
30:46 look hey crying you know hey hello the verse says the Lord is near to the
30:53 brokenhearted and the crushed in spirit. Can you
30:58 understand what that word says? And he says um what is your name? His name is
31:04 Jacob. And he says, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with man
31:11 and prevailed." The word Israel means either God strives or strive with God. A
31:17 change of name instead of being a suppler, a conniver, a schemer, he now becomes a man who strives with God. A
31:23 respectable name. If you ever watched uh this show called Itman number three, his
31:29 call to fame was because he can tahan two minutes with Mike Tyson. If you can tahan two minutes fighting a night Tyson
31:35 then you've made it. So here Jacob's name reflects the fact that he can tahan all night with God. He's striven with
31:43 God and he's discovered things. Steven J. Cole writes these words. I'll just read. Jacob wrestled with God and
31:49 prevailed in the sense of hanging on until God blessed him. But first God prevailed over Jacob by crippling his
31:55 stubborn self-dependence. Jacob's prevailing with men is a prediction of how God will now conquer Jacob's
32:01 enemies. The most pressing being Esau by his power rather than through Jacob's conniving ways. All his life he char
32:10 Jalan on his own. He's always trying to get a deal. He's always trying to come out as number one using his own efforts.
32:16 And now he learns that you wrestle to God to get God's blessing. You actually have to be weaker rather than be
32:22 stronger and rely on God's power. It's like the fight against the Macalytes in Exodus chapter 17. You have a fight
32:29 against the Maces with Joshua led and where was where was Moses? Moses on the hill and Jo and and whenever Moses held
32:36 up his hand, Israel prevailed. Whenever he lowered his hand, a Malachite prevailed. So where was the fight? It
32:42 wasn't downstairs. The fight isn't with Esau. The fight is with God at the river
32:47 Jabok. And for each and every single one of us coming out from the wrestling with God, the fight with your life is to
32:53 realize that the fight isn't fighting with your wife or your job or
32:58 the political situation. Actually, the fight is actually with God. When your hands are raised to God, you prevail and
33:05 the hands drop down, you don't prevail. Um, blessedness. When we talk about
33:11 blessedness, you want to be blessed. And when we talk about blessedness, we see everybody's face smiling. you got uh uh
33:18 uh lots of riches, you know. Um if you look at his life, chapter 2 33, 34, 35,
33:25 he is reconciled with Esau in chapter 33. In chapter 34, he's very blessed.
33:31 His his daughter gets raped. Not only his daughter gets raped, his
33:37 sons in rage to avenge the sister's death, attack an entire city called
33:43 Sheckcham and kills all the men. He is responsible for a atrocity, a genocide.
33:51 Uh then his uh favorite wife Rebecca dies
33:57 you know have giving birth to Banyamin. His son Reuben has sex with his mother
34:04 and then Joseph is lost. Blessedness. Oh like that blessedness I don't want.
34:10 If that is blessedness I don't want. You see God teaches us a lot of church tells you that blessedness is only material
34:18 blessings. That's why you got prosperity gospel. That's why those those churches grow. But in real life you look at life
34:25 of Jacob his blessedness is very painful. It's blessedness is blessed is
34:31 a man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers. His delight is in the law of
34:38 the lord and on this law he meditates in it day and night. That is blessedness.
34:44 Sitting in a church, listening to God's word, having it come in and penetrate your life is blessedness. Jesus taught
34:52 the greatest sermon was on the mount. You know is blessedness? Poor in spirit.
34:58 Those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who are merciful,
35:04 those who are peacemakers, those are pure in heart, those who are persecuted. This is the picture of blessedness. But
35:09 if I give you this picture of blessedness, you are not going to cling to it. Most of you don't like this. So
35:14 if it's blessedness, I don't want. That's why you need to basically struggle. That's why God has to break
35:21 you. See, normally you won't ask for this sort of blessing, right? Only when
35:27 God breaks you, when you're totally broken down, then you turn and say, "God, this is what really matters." Only
35:33 when you finish chasing all the excitement of the world and you suddenly find emptiness and you're broken and
35:41 then you turn and say this is what it was all about all along. This is Ubekistan
35:48 uh Muslim country and you see how God breaks people to make people in blessedness.
35:54 uh in 1930 the uh Koreans migrated to Vladivasto
35:60 in in in Russia near Korea and uh they settled down there because the Japanese
36:05 invaded Korea and somehow Joseph Stalin you know didn't trust them because he's
36:11 building arms factories in Vladivasto and so therefore what he did is forcibly told them to migrate push them all out
36:18 to five areas in the Soviet Union and one of these areas is Ubakistan this is Tash Kent
36:24 And for for for many hundreds of years, the people here are Muslim and they are very resistant in the gospel of Jesus
36:30 Christ. They they don't become Christians. The Koreans came in the 1940s
36:37 and they were accepted because they were hardworking, they were industrious, they were kind, they were gentle people and
36:42 they were accepted in every facet of Ubakistan life. But among the Koreans that had to be forcibly uprooted and
36:48 broken from their homeland were Christians. And when they were assimilated into
36:54 Ubakistan, they had an opportunity to share not only their culture but their beliefs. And there has been a great
36:60 revival up to 1990s when they started have great revival in Ubakistan. Why?
37:05 Because God breaks his people, sends them out and become a blessing to the
37:11 world. Challenge to us today, we can look at
37:16 this sermon and come out only three ways. Okay?
37:21 Okay. And this will apply to every single one of us. So I want you to pay real close attention. Number one, you
37:27 could be like a very famous movie star in my time called Paul Hogan. Yeah. Because Paul Hogan don't know
37:33 whether he's dead or alive. He's alive. He had a stroke. When he had
37:39 a stroke, he was in coma for five days. Didn't know whether he's going to live or die. At the end of this uh coma, he
37:47 woke up. You know what he said? He said it's just a freak thing that was wasted on me. If it was supposed to provide
37:54 some sort of revelation. So for Paul Hogan like crocodundy is like water of a
37:59 duck's backside. It doesn't really affect him at all. You could walk out of here today with a story of Jacob like
38:05 Paul Hogan. Wait for God to wall up you with a stroke. Three days you wake up. It's okay. If it was supposed to be some
38:11 sort of revelation, well it was wasted on me because he's got no spiritual sensitivity. He's just like Esau.
38:17 Or you could be like Lot's wife. Lot's wife said to him, "Do you still hold
38:22 fast your integrity? Curse God and die. When you wrestle with God, you could have brokenness and all your wealth is
38:29 taken away, your health is taken away, and you you turn around and curse God and die. You know why? Because God is supposed to help me. Your blessedness is
38:36 cursing me." And you walk away. Or you could be like this lady. And they asked
38:43 her after 50 years in a wheelchair and she's name is Joanie Ericson
38:49 interview she said these words if I was still on my feet it's hard to say how things would have gone I probably would
38:55 have drifted through life marriage maybe even divorce dissatisfied disillusioned
39:01 when I was in high school I reacted to life selfishly and never built on any long-lasting values and almost always at
39:07 the expense of others when you look back you know if she had not this is what she'd probably be a typical American in
39:14 life. This is what you you wind up. And then she said, "But are you happy?" the girl, teenage girl asked. I really am. I
39:21 wouldn't change my life for anything. I'm really thankful he did something to get my attention and to change me. Lord,
39:31 you don't have to put you guys in a wheelchair. You have to come to a place in your
39:37 life. Some of us today are broken. You suffer from pain. You've suffered from emotional breakdown. Your mayor
39:43 marriages have breakdown. Your life has broken down. But that's not a sign because God hates you. No. God didn't
39:50 jump on Jacob because he hates Jacob. He jumps on Jacob because he loves Jacob.
39:56 And sometimes in our brokenness and our wrestling and our struggling, God is just coming to you and he wants you to
40:02 be a place where you could say that I really want to delight in God. And
40:08 that's something that we have to each of in every one of us face. What are we wrestling with? Are you wrestling with
40:14 your wife, your boss, your enemy, your illness? Are you trying to change the color of your day? Pull the curtains
40:20 back. Every day we wrestle with these things. You're actually wrestling with yourself. You're wrestling with your
40:25 flesh. John Odberg says, um, Jesus doesn't come
40:31 to rearrange the outside of the life the way we want it. He comes to rearrange the inside of our life the way God wants
40:37 it. And so therefore, as we leave today, let us leave understanding that brokenness isn't bad.
40:44 When you're coming up here and people praying, you're crying. That's a good place to be. You know, if you're never
40:51 up here and you're always back there super spiritual, then I'm sorry. Maybe you're not at the right place. It's when
40:57 we're broken when God is closest to you. If you never
41:03 allowed yourself to be broken, now feel the pain of his death for you. You see,
41:09 if you don't feel and know how awfully far you are, you will never feel this love upon your
