Jacob's wrestling with God at the Jabbok River, as detailed in Genesis 32, illustrates the nature of God's personal encounters with believers. Despite Jacob's twenty years of hardship and deceit, God remained faithful to His promises, meeting him with angels and ultimately in a wrestling match that crippled him and led to his name change to Israel. This encounter highlights that God often meets individuals in their weakness, transforming them through personal, intimate experiences rather than spectacular displays. The sermon concludes by emphasizing that God's guidance is individual and personal, not bound by methods, and that the ultimate vision of God is found in the face of Jesus Christ.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.62 → restored 4.12
Morning everyone. I couldn't help but think that Brother John was talking about this beautiful weather we have this morning. I think the sun must have something to do with the movements of these suns of earth. Because you see the weather is just broken lovely now because the time of my departure is in hand. Reminds me when I think it was our very first visit we made to Costa Rica. My wife and I, a few years back, and they didn't know us folks, which was one of the parts of their good fortune. And we arrived there, and they put on a little meal for us, which is kind of typical Latin thing to do, and visitors come to you, and we met in a little corrugated hall that they have there, and they served us their typical food.
And we enjoyed ourselves, but we're getting to know people little by little, as has been my pleasure to do with you this week. I won't remember all the names, but I can remember hairdos and colors of blouses and things like that, you know. And so we had a very nice time. We stayed three months with them on that occasion in the absence of one of the missionary families. And when we came to leave, they put on another supper for us. And this was a real big meal. And of course, I had to say something. And the only thing I could think of, I said, well, you must have been... very glad to see us come because I remember the meal or we remember the meal that you put on to welcome us here but I see that it was hardly comparable with what you're putting on tonight so you must be triply glad to see us go it was just such a much bigger festive occasion when we were leaving can't blame them for that well I was thinking too that remind me something like the Lord said you know when I look at you folks here this morning ye are they who have continued with me in my tribulations this week.
And my wife generally instructs me about how to treat the best of friends. By the way, a man's best advice generally comes from his wife in case you're wondering. She said, now don't be cramming on the last few meetings, the last meeting or two. And that was what I was planning on doing this morning. How is it that these feminine words of instruction come creeping into your mind when you've just planned to do something? because I thought I should wind up our considerations of visions of God, particularly in the Old Testament, and then skip over into the new and do it in about a half an hour, because I'm not going to abuse your kindness, or as Tertullus said, the Felix of by clemency, by going over time this morning, because I understand the buses and the station wagons are moving out shortly afterwards.
But what I wanted to do was to pick out a few individuals that we could consider in detail but won't today due to time and then move over quickly and make a few comments about the New Testament. We were considering the life of Jacob when we closed yesterday morning, as I recall, and got to the place where God met him at Bethel on his way to Pedenarim when he was fleeing from the wrath of his brother, as God reminded him twenty years later. The Lord remembers the occasion under which he appeared to Jacob. He was running as a fugitive, really, fleeing from the wrath of his brother, and God met him there as we were noticing. And he gave him that beautiful promise, Behold, I am with thee. And I will keep thee in all places with us wherever thou goest.
And I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And I will bring thee into this land again. Now that must have been reverberating through Jacob's memory over the succeeding twenty years. because it wasn't until the twenty years were over at the close that we read in chapter thirty-two that the Lord appeared to Jacob again down in Paden Aram before he left the house of Laban. And these twenty years were not characterized by some sudden spectacular appearance by God to Jacob. Did you ever stop to think that only three times in the life of the master did he hear a voice from heaven?
How many times have you and I just wish that the Lord would say something audibly, personally to us on a given difficult occasion. We have done that, haven't we? I know I have done that. And then I remember, well, the master was here, and he was here as we are here. And he was walking, as I suggested to you yesterday, the path of faith. And only three times did he hear an audible voice from heaven. No, he went into the mountaintop on more than one occasion, and he stayed all night and communed with his father. But A audible voice out at heaven, it seems he only heard three times. Three times in those three and a half years approximately of his public service.
Now the life of Jacob was something similar, and I think our experience is something similar. God meets us oftentimes in the beginning of our Christian walk. I think a lot of Christians have this experience at any rate. And some of us are very young when this happens, and some of us perhaps later on. But he met Jacob in the early stages of his pilgrimage. And he made that wonderful revelation of himself as he stood at the top. Jehovah stood at the top of the ladder. And we noticed yesterday that that ladder is the Son of Man. There's going to be the one who would bring earth and heaven together. Not that heaven is that far away either. Neither is hell for that matter. When you come to Revelation chapter nine, there's a door open to a shaft that goes into the pit. And out of that emerge a cavalry of demonic spirits.
And it's just right there. And heaven is not some astronomical remote distance away from us. The presence of God may be real to us every day, and the presence of the Lord is real to us, an individual and intimate. But Jacob goes away for twenty years, and he goes away with that promise ringing in his ears. I will be with thee. I will not forsake thee. I will bless thee. And I will bring thee into this land again. And that promise stood good for twenty years, and it stood good through the labyrinth through the maze, through all the twisted experiences and pathways of this supplanter, Jacob. You remember a way over in the book of Hosea.
We read in Hosea chapter twelve that Jacob is a merchant man, the balancers of deceit are in his hand. He took his brother by the heel and the womb, and he was rightly named, as Esau said, a supplanter, someone who took from another that which belonged to him. And so... When he's in the house of his father-in-law, he has difficulties multiplied through twenty years. He changes his wages ten times. He endures the cold of the night and the heat of the day. He endures the ravages of the wild beasts. And he was weary. And he tells his wives later on, you know that I have served your father with my whole heart and my very best.
It isn't always the mother's-in-law, you know, that can give the problems. Here's a father-in-law. And he's a very subtle, wily, deceitful Syrian. And it's Jacob versus Laban for twenty years. And you can't help but wonder at some of the strategy which each of them use against the other. But all through that, all through the mistakes, and all through the stumblings, and all through the wonderings, and all through the conniving, and the schemings, and the plans, God said, I will be with thee. And so I think you and I need constantly to hang on to the solidity of some of these promises which God makes to us, not in general terms in his word, but individually as he makes covenants with us as we go on our way through life.
Now, it's not going to be a spectacular array of mountain peak experiences, but I do believe that there are special occasions in the life of each of us when the Lord appears to us, when he speaks to us, when he uses mean circumstances, people or his word to make a very special occasion out of a very difficult circumstance. Now, I know I'm not speaking in riddles. I'm not speaking mythically to some of you, or most of you, if not all of you, who have been on the pilgrim way these many years. So, twenty years come and twenty years go. And at the close of the twenty years, God appears to Jacob, and he says, go back to your country, go back to your father's house. And Jacob gathers together everything that he has, and he starts on his way.
And when we come to chapter thirty-two of Genesis, let me notice what it says to you here, the opening verse, Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. Thirty-two and verse one. Without any introduction, without any special occasion, without any emergency, without confronting any major difficulty, Jacob is going on his way and the angels of God met him. Later on, this group of angels is called a host or a camp. And later on, when Jacob comes to the Fort Javak, He says about how he had gone over the river Jordan with his staff.
And he's coming home with two bands. I've wondered about that. On this occasion, chapter thirty-two, as he's going on his way, I like this. As he went on his way, God has directed him. He knows where he's headed. He's going on his way. And in the process of the activity of journeying, the angels of God met him. Now that's all that's said. But isn't it significant? Why a host? Why a camp? Why a group of angels? Now we know that the terrain through which Jacob was traveling could be very perilous. It could be very dangerous. It was fraught with various dangers.
Bandits and wild beasts and so on through much of the country he was traveling. And he certainly needed protection. He needed a shield. He needed to be accompanied. And he was. Not one angel that smote the camp of the Assyrians in one night, eighty-five thousand people. He's got a host of them. He's got a group of them. And it's in the plural, and it's called a camp, Mahanaim, two bands. And I don't know. I can't say with certainty whether Jacob is referring to his own vast array of servants and sons and flocks and herds. when he later mentions that, he says, I crossed Jordan with this staff and now I'm coming back again, made two bands.
Is he talking about his own group of possessions? Or is he talking about his own family and his own servants plus the host of the angels of God? But there was some specific reason evidently why these angels met him at the beginning of chapter two. And all we may conclude is that God is being good to his promise And he's making very evident to Jacob, regardless of all the difficulties, regardless of all the problems, all the disappointments and the discouragement and the physical difficulties that he passed through, God is with him. And not only is God with him, God is with his children, his wives and his children and his servants and his flocks and his herds.
Comforting, isn't it? We're farther down on our journey, most of us, than we ever thought we would get there, aren't you? I never thought I would see certainly... I never thought I would be over forty. I'd ever be over forty. But here I am. No, I'm actually over fifty. But anyway, I never thought I would see the decade of the eighties. I never dreamt we'd ever see the nineties. And at any rate, there were eighty-eight reasons why the Lord was coming in nineteen eighty-eight. You remember that one? I read those two books too. And then do you remember that after the eighty-eight reasons why the Lord had to come in nineteen eighty-eight, he didn't do it. It was coming, you know, between sunset and sunrise, September the thirteen through fifteenth, and he didn't come on those feast days.
So then, oh, that's right, we made a slight mathematical error. It's ninety-one he's coming. Yes, in ninety-one. So in the fall of ninety-one you understand the Lord will be here. Well, ninety-one came and ninety-one's gone. And I was in North Carolina a while back for a little conference on a weekend, and I was handed some new literature altogether, printed in blue, I suppose that was to be a heavenly message. And it said that computations had been rectified now, and the Lord was definitely coming in the fall of ninety-two. What are you folks doing here? This is ninety-three. They've been making all kinds of prognostications of that kind, and we are still here, and we never thought we would be this far likely on the journey. But regardless of twenty, fifty, sixty, seventy years that may lie behind us, God is with us still.
And all that we have is His. And so Jacob moves forward. And then something rather strange happens. He gets word that Esau is coming. Now twenty years have not erased from the memory of Jacob his own trickery. Neither have they wiped out the stain that conscience has left upon his heart. And he's afraid of Esau. Isn't it remarkable how human nature still, even after God has done all this for us, doubts and questions and is afraid, and you come into a new situation and you say, how am I ever going to handle that? They've actually invited me to go to Park of the Palms for a week. What am I going to do with this?
Well, look at all those stern, intelligent aged faces and what will I say. So, I was quite apprehensive about it to be very honest and frank with you. So, in spite of all that the Lord has been to us and has done for us, we meet new circumstances and here's Jacob and he hears that Esau is coming and he's afraid. So, he gets together a minka, a gift offering. And that goes way back, as I suggested to you earlier in the week, to Cain and Abel. So, he gets these presents ready. Now, I don't know. I have no way of computing this. I'm only suspecting, perchance, that it may have been this way. But when God met Jacob at Bethlehem in chapter twenty-eight, Jacob promised God with the oil poured on top of the pillow that became the pillar.
He promised God that he would give him a tenth of everything that the Lord would bless him with. Now, I don't read of that ever happening. And whether it could or couldn't have happened in the land of Cain and Aaron, I leave you to decide. But at any rate, he's on his way home. The vow is twenty years old. He has accumulated a tremendous amount of wealth. And I don't have any indication that any of it went back to God in any way whatsoever. So he's coming to meet Esau. And what is he going to do? He's going to do for Esau what evidently hasn't done up until now for the Lord. Hmm. I think I see a reflection there. Somebody's face.
And it's not likely yours. So he gets all these presents ready, these gift offerings, these minkas. He gets these all ready. And he sends them over in droves. So many hundred this, and so many hundred of that, and so many score of something else. And he's moving them up ahead with his servants. And these are to meet Esau and his four hundred men on the way. And Esau's coming, it would seem, with an armed force. But at any rate, Jacob is afraid. Now, is Jacob finally having to give to Esau... what he should have been giving to the Lord. Did you ever see it work that way? We know that all that we have is his. We know that we should be giving back to the Lord of the abundance of the things he has given to us.
We know that if the Jew is required to give much more than a tent, if you add up all the votive offerings, the gift offerings, etc., the free will offerings, and yet it's difficult sometimes to discover the saints of our day who go as far as the law. Or she may have said, but he's giving it now or offering it now to somebody else. Should he offer to Esau what he should have already offered to the Lord? Be that as it may, he sends the presence on. And then we come to that marvelous passage, and I heard you once, we come to that marvelous passage in chapter thirty-two, when he sent his wives over in verse twenty-two, and he was left alone in verse twenty-four, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.
Very intriguing passage. A passage that stirs your mind to consider it. Visions of God. Who is this man of high degree, as he is called? Who is this one that Jacob prevails against? That's a marvelous thing to say, isn't it? In Hosea chapter twelve. He took his brother by the heel, but he wrestled as a prince with God. And he prevailed against the angel of the Lord. He prevailed by his strength. He prevailed, it says, against the angel of the Lord.
How does a man prevail with God? How does a man wrestle hand to hand, cheek to cheek, body to body with an angel of the Lord? Who is this one? that retains the authority to change his name now from Jacob to Israel. A prince with God. Who is this strange person who meets him alone? The angels of God met him as a company to accompany. But this one meets Jacob as man to man. Let us never forfeit our personal experiences with the Lord.
because we have them in the aggregate. Let us never think that because as a congregation we meet and enjoy the presence of the Lord, that's all that we require. Let us remember there are still personal, individual encounters with God. And I know it isn't always true or safe, perhaps I should say, it isn't always wise to take this expression, the angel of the Lord. and to apply it as a theophany, though I do believe often it is, it's one of the manifestations of God, the second person of the Godhead in man-like form, individually called the angel of the Lord.
You say, I don't think you have confirmation of that. Yes, I think I have plenty of confirmation of that, and different occasions in the Scriptures, that when God appears as an angel, it is the Lord himself. He did that as we already saw in Genesis eighteen with Abraham. He'll do that again as we may see with Moses at the burning bush. The angel the Lord spoke unto Moses and Moses says, Who art thou? And he says, I am. And this man who, this man of high degree who meets Jacob at the Fort Jabbok, I believe is the Lord himself. And he finally reduces Jacob. Jacob must have been a very strong individual physically.
How could you wrestle all night with an angel of God? And how was it only that by touching him in his thigh and crippling him in that way that he brought him into a place of submission? Nature dies hard, doesn't it? And liberty and weakness and frailty and submission come hard. Because by nature we are independent, we are lawless. But it's only when nature is crippled. It's only when nature is quiet, as we noticed with Abraham in his tent door, that God reveals himself to us. So Jacob is crippled.
And he says, what is your name? And Jacob clung to him and he said, I won't let you go until you bless me. The perseverance, the unjust judge and the widow woman. You remember that story. I won't let you go until you bless me. And this insistence, this perseverance is something that God ever deprives us. How many of us come to the mortal position and go on our way? And we say, well, that faith enables me to do it. It might be and it might not be. It might be carelessness that makes us to do it. It might be presumption that makes us to do it. Here's a man he hangs on to the angel of God all night. He says, I won't let you go until you bless me. Then he says, what's your name?
And he changes his name to Israel, a prince of the cloth. Jacob says, he called Lazar Bethel, the house of God, because that's where he met him first. He calls before Jabot Peniel the faith of God. For he says, I have seen God, faith, faith, and my life is preserved. Visions of God in the night. And he moves on. He goes on. And then the Lord appears to him again in chapter thirty-five. And he says, Go up to Bethel and dwell there. And make there an altar unto God that appeared unto thee. That's thirty-five and one. When thou fledest from the face of Esau thy brother.
And then God appears to Jacob again in verse nine of chapter thirty-five and so on. Now I leave Jacob with you. And let's move quickly on. I just want to mention now of a few of the others that I had planned or thought about. in connection with visions of God in the Old Testament. When we come out of the book of Genesis, you thought it was never going to get out of there, didn't you? Well, when we get out of the book of Genesis, we come into Exodus, the first thing, or very early you meet in the book of Genesis, Exodus rather, is another vision of God, which I've already briefly referred to in connection with Moses. When Moses comes to the burning bush in chapter three, he meets God face to face.
the Lord is pleased to take up circumstances and conditions and even things as well as people to reveal himself in accordance with the individual, the circumstance, and the purpose of the visit. We would like to box God in, wouldn't we? Don't we find, or have you found, guidance, the matter of guidance about which so many Christians often have difficulty? Haven't you found guidance just this very thing? For example, you have a major decision to make, and you go to the Lord about it, and you don't know what to do or where to go. You're not hearing any audible voices from heaven, and you open the book one day, and sure enough, right there in front of you, you have the answer to your problem.
Does that ever happen to you? Of course it's happened to you. Happens to Christians everywhere. And so you go on your way and very sure you are, and it proves to be so, God has given you definite direction. Then what happens? So many months or even years down the road, you come into another similar circumstances, another major decision to be made. And you say, I know how this works. So you open the Bible like that, boom. And there's nothing there. It doesn't work. So you don't know what to do. There's a loss now to get an answer to your problem. You're talking with another Christian one day, and you're making certain things, and a comment is dropped, and you've got it right there.
The Lord says, this is it. It's not alive. It's not Judas. No. This is it. And that's your answer. You know that's your answer. And you go your way. And certainly not, it was the Lord's leading. So you come up to a third difficulty, a third decision to be made. And you say, well, I remember how it was the first time. So you open the book at random and work. You go around and talk to a number of people. Silence. And you're in a quandary now. You say, Lord, how are you going to guide me? How are you going to tell me what to do? And he's waiting to tell you.
but not the way you think he's going to tell you. So he chooses another method altogether to show you the ways. Now, why does this happen in our lives as Christians? May I suggest one basic reason? We are naturally inclined to trust methods. And God says, with me, you don't trust methods. You trust me. And I won't do it the same way every time. Not only because the circumstances are different, but because I will do it with you and be to you thy God.
He will be to us an individual God as we are to him individual sons and daughters. And he will retain at all costs the individuality of his manner of our guidance. I have proven that over and over again. Before we ever went to Cuba, I better not go into all this. A way back in nineteen forty, during the course of the Second World War, everything was blowing up around us in Canada. It wasn't so much here in the States at that time, not so after Pearl Harbor, but we were in the midst of it there as I think of it. So I was very much interested and I thought I had the Lord's leading about going to Cuba as a missionary.
I'm not going to tell you all this story, but at any rate, I got very definite guidance from the Lord that we should go to Cuba. And my wife and I were married back there in nineteen forty-three. Now you know I'm over fifty. And you got that one figured out already, I'm pure. So what happened was we were given military exemption on the grounds of being minister of the gospel. And so we were served in Canada for a number of years. And when the war was over and the door was open to go to Cuba, I went to the Lord and I said, Lord, I want something. plain indication that we are now to go to Cuba when we couldn't back that many years ago. And I waited, and I prayed, and I read, and I watched, and I waited, and I prayed, and I read, and I watched, and I got no guidance.
And I said, I don't understand this. The Lord told me so many years ago that that's what He wanted me to be, and now He wants us to be, and now the war is over, and we can leave the country, and we can get passports to travel, etc. And now He won't tell me that He really wants me to go. You know what happened? Well, in a nutshell, He just closed doors all around. All around. And when all the doors were shut, as far as my service was concerned, It dawned on this dark, benighted mind that the Lord hadn't changed his mind at all. He told me once, did he have to tell me again?
So he just shut all the doors. I said, all right, I see. What is he doing? He is staying true to his first commitment and guidance. And the gifts and calling of God are without alterations. He doesn't fluctuate. He doesn't change his mind. Circumstances come and circumstances go, but God is the same and his word is the same. And he is reliable and his word is reliable. When he makes a covenant with us personally about anything, he will stand to that covenant. So he said, all right, I'll show you. You have to be shown. I'll show you. And I had all the disappointments and it was disappointing. I have all the doors shut in my face. And he used some old preachers to do it too.
No, they're real. Handy instruments to that sometimes. And he shut all the doors around and he blocked me out of everywhere and everything. And he said, Now, where you go? He said, Lord, I don't want to queue back there. The only door was left open. But God retains that right to deal with us individually. Now, we come to the next case, Moses at the burning bush. He meets him. The I am. He commissions him. You know that marvelous story. And Moses sees God face to face in the burning bush. Moses later on goes up Mount Sinai. And as the Lord said, and I quoted you the other day at the beginning of our studies, the Lord said, He will see the similitude of Jehovah.
And I will talk with him face to face. Moses comes down, the tabernacle is built. When Moses wants to talk with God, he goes in to the sanctuary. And he talks to the Lord in front or before it. the propitiatory, the mercy seat. And God answers Moses. And this man is characterized by individual communication with God all the way through. He's a man that has seen God. After Moses, who comes to the stage? Joshua. Did Joshua see the Lord? River Jordan? Gilgal? He stands there ready to go in and possess the land, and he sees a man with a drawn sword in his hand.
And Joshua says, are you for us or for our enemies? Do you come in peace or how do you come? He said, no. I came as a captain of the hosts of the Lord. Take your shoes off your feet. And here's another of the theophanies. When a man looks upon God as he's pleased to present himself to this man in keeping with his calling, in keeping with his service, in keeping with his charge, and in keeping with the work that lies before. I insist on leaving with you this thought. God is your goal. My God. Your life is not mine. Your experiences are not mine. My needs are not your needs. My difficulties are not your difficulties. And God meets us individually on the ground which is pleased to do so.
So Joshua meets the Lord. And then you come out of the book of Joshua and the book of Judges, and let me just throw two little brief instances at you. Judges chapter six, we have Gideon, poor man. I was interested to note the various tribes of these men come from. God makes no exception of persons. He doesn't discriminate, as we say today, so frequently. And so he takes a poor man of a poor house of a poor tribe to the tribe of Manasseh. And he's grinding wheat, where wheat wasn't supposed to be ground, but it was in the wine press out of sight of the Midianites because of the Midianites who were robbing and spoiling and pillaging the land of Israel.
And the Lord meets him, and the angel of the Lord meets Gideon there, and he says, God is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. Mighty man of valor, did you say? Why, says Gideon, he protested. He said, I'm of a poor family, the poorest family in the tribe of Manasseh. And I am the very least of my father's house. And if the Lord is with us, why has all this befallen us? Two major requirements to be used of God. One is personal humility. And the second is confidence in the victory of the presence of God. See what he says?
I'm the least in my father's house. My father's house is the least in all the tribe of Manasseh. Why do you say to me, thou mighty man of valor? And then anyway, if the Lord is with us, why have all these things befall in us? And the angel of the Lord looks at him. He says, go in this thy might. Where is the strength? Where is the might? Lack of self-confidence and an understanding that the presence of God means victory. Another one of the interesting visions of God we have in the Old Testament. We move over to chapter thirteen and there's a woman in chapter thirteen. I know we don't have her name.
We don't need her name. She was looking after her personal duties. her house duties and the angel of God appears to her and he says you're going to have a son but she had all lost all hope of having son aren't these childless couples a wonderful study in the scriptures marvelous and the children that come out of these childless couples so she she wasn't going to have any children and the angel of the Lord promises her children a son rather and what she used to do with this son now she belongs to the tribe of Dan and you know that the tribe of Dan turned out to be a tribe of inferior quality and even of treachery in Israel. And Jacob spoke about them in his dying prophecy in chapter forty-nine of Genesis.
And of the tribe of Dan now, here's this woman, and she's told by a visit from the angel of the Lord that she is going to have a son. And this is how you'll do this and this and this. And she runs out into the field where Manoa, her wife is, her husband is working, and she runs out to town. She says, there's a man appeared to me. Oh, man. What did he say? He said, we're going to have a son. And he told me what I'm to do. And Han to be careful about this. And Han to raise this son. Oh. I see. Manoa didn't know anything about it. No. No. But his wife knew about it. She not only was a very able vessel for what was going to happen, but she was a very logical, clear thinking individual.
Minoa goes to the Lord and he asks the Lord, he says, Lord, if you've really sent someone to my wife, have him come back again to convince me that this has really happened. He goes on with his work and his wife's out in the field one day and the man appears to her again. He's an angel of the Lord. She's doing what she's supposed to be doing. And he appears to it in the outworking of the daily duties and tells her again. and she waits there and she runs to tell her husband and her husband comes back and you know the story what shall we do how shall we order the child how shall we raise this child how should we conduct ourselves with this child Samson of the tribe of Dan and so he tells Manoa again what he had told his wife previously and Manoa says oh no if you're really a messenger from God let us go and get your present and he goes and gets a a meal ready as Abraham did and he brings it and I'll give it to you for to eat well he said you'll have to offer it to the Lord for I won't touch your food and he lays it on a rock and then it says the angel did a wonderful thing because fire came and as the fire went up from the altar which would be a burnt offering they went up from the altar the angel just appeared in the flame and Noah falls on his face and he says we're dead
because we've seen God face to face and his wife said You are not thinking straight. If God wanted to kill us, would He have appeared to us? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And then you know the rest of that story. Well, we come on through, and we keep on coming through, visions of God through the Old Testament. Samuel, Solomon, Daniel, when Gabriel comes to us. But here's the best of it all. We come into the New Testament. And I was thinking of this word and it was running through my mind.
We beheld his glory. John one and fourteen. The word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. We beheld his glory. What was the glory that John's talking about? And when you... Because here's the verse. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God was seen in the face of Jesus. Christ. Now, I admit this whole study breaks down because the best is yet to be enjoyed. However, those who looked upon the face of Emmanuel, when the day Mary saw him and laid him in the manger, when the day was wrapped by another and a mother's hand laid in the manger, to the day he was wrapped by another's hand and laid in a sepulcher, he was Emmanuel the mighty God is with us and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God was perfectly seen in the face of Jesus Christ John says we beheld his glory and when you first read that you say I know what he's thinking about the transfiguration he doesn't even talk about the transfiguration you can't find it in the gospel by jaw what
glory is he talking about he says look at the construction carefully He said, we beheld His glory, the glory as of an only begotten Son from beside the Father. The definite article is not there. It's not the only begotten Son. He was the only begotten Son. No doubt about that, but that's not the idea. We beheld His glory as one who had come from being beside the Father. Oh, what was the glory? It was the glory of the Father seen in the Son. And that glory you may trace, of course, through the Gospel by John.
But I haven't given you time, have I? Well, may you have a good day. You are they who have continued with me in my tribulations. Shall we pray? Our Father, we pause a moment. For we remember that there's a glory that is bright above the brightness of the Son. It is the glory... seen in the face of thee, son. We thank thee for who he is. We thank thee for who he was. We thank thee for the mission of his coming to declare thy name, to reveal thyself, so that he could say, he that has seen me, has seen the Father.
Bless our meditation of thy word as it may please the Lord this morning, as we commend as to thee for the remainder of the activities of this day, through the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.