Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - A Con Artist’s Struggle

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

How do we find God? We’re looking now to, I think, probably the strangest of all narrative accounts in the Bible of a human being encountering God. It’s a long story. All of Jacob’s life, he’s been wrestling with his twin brother, Esau. He’s been away, but he decides to come back and finally have it out. He sends a bunch of gifts ahead of him, he divides his own family up, and he gets ready to meet Esau alone. And there in the dark when Jacob is alone, a mysterious man—not Esau—attacks him, and he wrestles him all night. Finally, as the day is about to break, Jacob realizes this is the Lord himself—that he’s wrestling with God. Jacob meets God, and the encounter tells us how we can meet God and how we can check our own hearts to find out if we’ve met God. Four things: 1) an encounter with God is personal, 2) an encounter with God is personal wrestling, 3) an encounter with God is always losing, but 4) an encounter with God is winning through losing. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 21, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Genesis 32:22-32. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Did you know that the Bible is all about Jesus from beginning to end? But sometimes you need signposts to point you to Christ. Today Tim Keller is looking at how we can see Christ and his mission in glory. After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelunlife.com and sign up for email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about gospel change lives as well as other valuable gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at GospelUnlife.com. Let me re-emphasize, because if you're too different voices, say it, it'll stick. We have been saying for several years around here, if you're not in a small group, if you're not in a group, you're not in the church.

Now, that, like every, every vivid and helpful statement is an exaggeration and oversimplification, because you can join this church, you can be part of this church and just not get the small groups, however, in general. What we try to say, of course, is that we're going to do our very best to meet needs and to embrace everyone, but there's a certain sense in which if you're not in a small group and something goes wrong in your life, you need to be understanding. You're not on our radar. It's hard to find you. It's hard to know that you're there. You have to recognize the realities of urban life, and therefore if you're not in a group and you're not part of the system of listening to people and caring for people, watching out for people, we'll do our very best, but you don't complain too loudly if you're not in a group and you find that someone's not really noticing needs that you've gotten your life.

If you're not in a group in the fullest sense of the word, you're really not it, Redeemer. So sign up, be involved, get involved. And also, next week we do our breakfast, our birthday breakfast. You do have to buy tickets. But I really encourage you to do that because this year, as we think about our past and our future, we're going to be doing some major changes. And this is a pivotal year in Redeemer's life.

We're thinking of going into some radical new directions. You'll read about it. I did an article in the next newsletter. But if you come to the breakfast, I'll begin to talk about that. We'll be talking about it all year. So make your effort by those tickets right afterwards and come. Let me read you the passage of scripture. This is on which the teaching is based. And by the way, if you want examples of great storytelling, there's nothing like the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, for being able to get an entire story across in intimate detail

and yet with incredible economy of style. Here's this great and strange story of Jacob. Genesis 32 versus 22 to 32. That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maid servants and his 11 sons, and crossed the Ford of the J-bok. And after he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.

So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. And when the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, let me go for it is daybreak. But Jacob replied, I will not let you go unless you bless me." And the man's asked him, what is your name? And Jacob, he answered, then the man said, your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,

because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome. And Jacob said, please tell me your name, but he replied, why do you ask me my name? Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place penile, saying, it is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared. The sun rose above him as he passed penile,

and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore, to this day, the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon. And this is God's word. Well, you know, last week I quoted a very interesting article by Naomi Wolf. It was in the fall, a fall issue of Mademoiselle magazine and she said, and Naomi Wolfe, you know, is definitely what you call a member of the cultural elite. She, she's a feminist, author, she's a sharp young woman. I think if I remember correctly, she's married to a man who's also in publishing, he's a magazine editor, something they live in

Washington, DC, and very much part of the scene. And in this article, she said that she had come to the conclusion after a period of time that to live a life of secularism, a life without God, a life of sort of skepticism about God, a life of secularism didn't work. It was arid. Secularism, she said, a life without God

is not a basis for working for justice in society, not an adequate basis, and it's not an adequate basis for finding personal meaning in life. And so she's on a quest for God. She says she's looking for God and what she wants to know is, how do I find God and how do I know what He wants of me? And she says that the problem is that she believes that in this time there are increasing numbers of people like her, but they're kind of in the closet, because they're afraid of the ridicule of their peers.

And I think she's absolutely right. I think there is an increase. I don't think there's ever been in my memory that this kind of spiritual search and going on. So the question is, how do we find God? How do we know? We're looking at the Hebrew scriptures. We're looking at these incredible stories of people who met God. How do we know? We're looking at the Hebrew Scriptures. We're looking at these incredible

stories of people who met God. And we're looking at, I think, probably the strangest of all the narrative accounts in the Bible of a human being having an encounter with God. And yet, strangest it is. It has all the elements that it tells you how you can know. In fact, you can also, it's also a way of telling you how you can find and have a personal encounter with the living God. The story, you see, starts off with this, that night Jacob got up and took his two wives and his two maid servants as an 11 sons and crossed the four to the J-buck.

What's going on? Well, it's a long story, but here's the point. All of the lines of Jacob's life converge here. And there's two things that you find. If you read in the book of Genesis, starting chapter 28 and going on quite a while, the story of Jacob, Jacob was a twin. Jacob was born with his twin brother Esau,

and all of his life he's been wrestling with Esau all his life in fact is one place where Rebecca is Carrying the twins and they they're always fighting in there is as they jostle each other She went and asked you know a prophet to talk to her. He's what's going on in here? And and and when they came out Esau came out first. He was the older one But Jacob came out grabbing on to Esau's foot. You see, and they were wrestling in there. And of course, as they grew up, Isaac loved Esau the best. And Isaac decided, I'm going to make Esau.

I'm going to give Esau the blessing. And see, that's the other theme of Jacob's life. Wrestling with Esau for the blessing. Well, what's the blessing? Well, in those days in Well, what's the blessing? Well, in those days in time, here's what it was. Which of these two was going to become, get the birthright, who was gonna become,

get the inheritance, who was going to have the mantle of the head of the clan past? Because you see, the blessing, the birthright meant that that one became in a sense the authority for the whole clan. He would be the one over everyone. And he also became the CEO of the estate, and he got the lion's share of the estate. And Jacob wanted that blessing.

And one day when Isaac was very old, Jacob dressed up as Esau and went into C Isaac and posed as Esau and tricked Isaac into giving him the verbal blessing and the verbal birthright. And when it was all over and Isaac found out about the trick, he realized that that's really what God had wanted and he refused to take it back. And Esau said, the minute my father is dead, so was Jacob. Esau swore to kill Jacob.

And so because of this conning, because of this deception, Jacob, now, because he saw so angry with him, Jacob has to flee. He has to run. He has to go. And it's a long story about how he has to live. Away from the land he loves, away from the blessing, away from the birthright, which he says is mine.

And of course, he deceives, and he is deceived. It's very interesting how he works with his uncle, and there's a number of things that we don't go into now. But finally Jacob decides to come back. He wants to get the blessing. That is his. He wants to take over. He wants to live in the land where he belongs. But he knows that he saw is on his way with a small army. And so Jacob decides it's time to have it out. The man I've been wrestling with all my life, the man who's been ruining my life, I'm going to finally have it out with him.

And he actually sends a whole bunch of gifts, livestock and money to Esau ahead of him. And then he divides his own family up and sends them over to J-bok and gets ready to meet Esau alone. At least if Esau kills him, his family might get away. And he's all ready to meet Isah alone. At least if Isah kills him, hit him, his family might get away. And he's all ready to meet the man that he'd been wrestling with all his life,

who's been ruining his life. And they're in the dark when Jacob is alone. A mysterious man, not Isah, attacks him. And he wrestles with him all night. And finally, as the day is about to break, as we'll see, Jacob begins to realize that this is the Lord himself. This is God himself, that he's wrestling with God, as we saw in verse 28,

and that the face that he's about to see is that dawn comes up as the face of God, as we see in verse 30. Jacob meets God, and the encounter tells us how we can meet God. And what, and actually the encounter tells us, this whole story tells us how you can even check your own heart out today and find out if you have met God. Four things.

Number one, the first thing, an encounter with God is personal. What I'm looking at, the thing that's so important is it says in verse 24, Jacob was alone. And it wasn't until Jacob was alone that he met God. Why is that so important? Have you not experienced this? Let me contrast real encounter with God with what most people experience in terms of religion. Most people experience religion like this, you have phases, isn't this true? For example, I give you three quick examples. You've had it when you were in with your family, you went to church, you were very

active, and then you went off to college, and God was absolutely unreal. Very odd, you were real active. You're very involved. You found the Bible maybe interesting. You might have gone to church or synagogue or something, but you were very involved. Then you went off to college, and there was no interest. There was no need, no need to pray, no need to go to services, no need to practice Christianity.

What happened? God was unreal. Give you another example. You go to college, and you get involved in Christian activities, Christian activities, and you write read books and you argue with your other college classmates about the truth of Christianity. It's very active. And then you get out of college and you get into the real world and you get a job, God gets totally unreal. You just

don't have any sense of any need. You don't have any sense of, you don't need to pray. You don't do any worship. You don't practice your Christianity more. It's sort of, where is it? Not there. Give you one more example. You have a hard time in your life, difficult time, and you start to go to church, like Redeemer maybe,

or a church like Redeemer, or something like that, and you're impressed with the vitality. Things make sense. And as far as you, and you're impressed with the vitality. Things make sense. And as far as you know, you're giving yourself to the Lord. You give yourself to God. And you feel like you're very active, and you're reading the Bible, and you're praying, and you all that.

And then something happens, change, a change happens. So for example, maybe the trouble goes away that originally drove you to the church. Or maybe your job moves you to another city and you never can quite find a church just like the one that you were so active in. And either because your life gets better or you go to another city for some reason, oddly enough, no need for God,

no need for church, no need to pray. God just seems very unreal. Why? Simple. You never met him alone. You met him in a group. You were swept along with the group, but you never met him yourself. You never met him personally. You see? And when you see, in other words, he was in the environment and you experienced him in the environment and when the environment changed, you had no need of him. He wasn't there. He didn't feel him.

It never come in. I was listening to a man critique, Victorian religion. And it's pretty interesting because recently there have been some books that have come out talking about how Victorian England was actually a good place. The books have praised Victorian England because people were incredibly religious during Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria, incredibly religious.

And there was a tremendous amount of emphasis on morality and virtue, and social problems tended to go down and so forth. But this particular man who was a very strong Christian minister was critiquing it. And he said, here's why, the way he put it is, first of all, he quoted interestingly enough. He says, yes, they're very religious Victorians, but he quoted Lord Melbourne, who was Victoria's first prime minister, who at one point said this, things have come to a pretty pass if religion is going

to start being personal. Now, and the commentator said this. He says, that was Victorian religion. He says that was Victorian religion. He says it was Victorian religion. He says in other words, religion is great. First of all, for the civic sphere. You have an inauguration, hand on the Bible. Much more dignified.

You're having a state funeral, do it in a church. Read the scripture, much more dignified. Or religion is also very good for national solidarity. You know, the war is going badly, national day of prayer. You want to rally people, make sure you end your speech, God help me. You know, that's good. Or religion is very good for families, too.

You know, you start to have a family, you start to raise a family, take those kids to church, give those kids some kind of moral fiber, show them that they have to care about other people. It's good for families, it's good for the nation, it's good for the church, but me personally. Well, come on, emotion, personal. And this is what he says at the end. He says the trouble with the Victorians was that religion overshadowed them, but it didn't penetrate them. Now just take another two minutes with me on this. It overshadowed them, but didn't penetrate them. Let's not pick on the Victorians.

I notice in the arts and leisure section of the New York Times this weekend, there was a very interesting article about a new movie coming out. I haven't seen it. Anybody has called the ice age And it's about 1973 in America and it's about this fact that we had a Victorian age here The late 30s the 40s the 50s in the early 60s. We were incredibly religious very much like the Victorians Everybody went to church all sorts of things like that. Lots of morality, lots of virtue, and then in 1973, here's the point. Americans, just like the British, like you probably,

if you went to college and were religious and afterwards, no need, or were in your family or religious and afterwards, no need, or very religious in one church moved another city, and no need, or very religious in one phase of your life when you had troubles, and then later on in other phases, and no need, all the same thing. You're overshadowed by religion.

You weren't penetrated. You hadn't met him alone. You never met him for yourself. You never met him as an individual. You're overshadowed. See, in 1973, the environment changed, and everybody said, well, why can't we do mateswalking? And everybody got confused.

Well, why can't we? They swapping? And everybody got confused. Well, why can't we? They'd been overshadowed by religion, but they weren't penetrated. You have to meet him alone. Like Jacob, Jacob did not meet him. So everybody else was gone. Now look, I know right now you're not alone. There's at least 1,000, but I don't know.

But there's at least 1, thousand people sitting here with you. So what? Don't be swept along. Don't look and say, well, I guess I probably ought to listen to this because there's other people here who look fairly competent. So what? You have to meet them alone.

Let me tell you something. The big problems in your life, you'll have to face alone. Some of you've already noticed that. Somebody close to you dies. Everybody's around you for a while and at some point they go home and you have to face it alone. Your business collapses, you have to face it alone. And eventually, on someday you're going to die and you have to face that. Either you have God in your

life with you to face it. otherwise you'll face it utterly alone. You have to face all the big things alone, but you can't bring the people with you. You can't bring the environment with you. Have you faced God alone? A lot of us, when we sit down with God to pray, unless we're very, very worried about something, very worried, After 10 minutes, we don't know what to say. We don't know what to do with God when we're alone. We may feel very spiritual with the atmosphere, with the music, with the teaching, with the people

around, but 10 minutes with God and we don't know what to say unless we're really worried about something. You know, the great saints of history, they knew what to do when they were alone. Give them an hour, give them two hours, give them three hours, give them four hours, all by themselves with God. Ah, you say they didn't have facts machines, they didn't have telephones. They were good at that. I don't care why we're terrible at it. The fact of the matter is we are terrible at it.

And the fact of the matter is we don't know what to do with God alone, and that's a very, very bad sign, that we don't know him at all, that we're getting our God encounter from other people. When the people go, he'll be gone. Encounter with God is personal. Secondly, encounter with God is personal wrestling, wrestling. Now, what is being told us here is if you meet God in reality, it will be a wrestling match.

It will not be a seminar, it will not be T in the garden. It will be wrestling. This is what it's saying. See, somebody might say, okay, okay. I'm a little worried now. You've got me a little worried. I'm not sure that I have a personal relationship. I don't know that I do. I don't know that I've met him alone. I don't know if I met him as a person. I don't know if he have been personally penetrated. Maybe I've just been overshadowed by religion instead of actually penetrated. Well, what do I do? And the answer is you've got to wrestle. One of the biggest obstacles for people to believe in Christianity is that they think

they already know all about it. But if we look at Jesus' encounters with various people during his life, we'll find some of our assumptions challenged. We see him meeting people at the point of their big unspoken questions. The gospels are full of encounters that made a profound impact on those who spoke with Jesus. And in his book Encounters with Jesus, Tim Keller explores how these encounters can still address our questions and doubts today. Encounters with Jesus is our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in life reach more people with the amazing love of Christ. Request your copy of

Encounters with Jesus today when you give at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. You've got a wrestle. Now, what is wrestling? God reveals himself in this passage to be a wrestler and people who have actually met him and not just had an environmental religious who have actually met him and not

just had an environmental religious experience, but actually met him, they wrestle. Well, what's wrestling? Let's think of at least, let me give you three qualities of wrestling, and that we'll try to work them on out, how that works out spiritually. The three qualities, first of all, look it, he wrestled with him. First of all, in wrestling, you can't do anything, but wrestling is intense. Wrestling is focused. All you do is focus on the wrestling. Now, I had a little experience with wrestling in junior high school and high school. I did some. And one of the things you can't do,

you can't think about anything else. You're not sitting around thinking about your summer vacation. You say, well, you know what? It would really be nice. You know, the guy's got you like this. It would really be nice if we could get to the beach this year for two weeks instead of one week. You don't do that. That never occurs to you. You can't think about, boy. Jacob wasn't there sitting there saying, you know,

I've really got to divide the flock and give it better pastor than one. He wasn't. There's nothing else in his mind. The utter centrality, utter focus, that's the first part of wrestling. Second part of wrestling is both parties contradict the other in their motions.

Each one is contradicting the motions of another. Otherwise, it's not wrestling. You see, if one move's like this and the other person moves along, that's not wrestling, that's tango. Okay? Wrestling is the opposite of dancing. You see, in dancing, you honor the other person's motions.

And in wrestling, you contradict. Then the third thing, I said, so first of all, wrestling is focus, intensity. Secondly, it's contradicting. But thirdly, the very interesting thing about wrestling also is better look. Somebody says, gee, you've never used your notes. Well, now you can say, I remember one time when she did.

The other thing, yeah, agony. I think it's pretty astounding that they wrestled all night. Have you ever wrestled at all? Wrestling is like going into a weight room, pressing and lifting, but the weights press and lift you back. I mean, could you press and lift for eight hours now? And it's even worse to have the weights pressing and lifting you back. But they went on for hours. I don't know how many hours, still four hours, five, six, seven, eight, agony.

Now, spiritually, how does that work out? Number one, you want to have an encounter with God. The first thing is utter focus. You may be religious, you may be non-religious, you may be moderately religious, it doesn't matter, but you're casual until you actually meet the living God. When you're beginning to meet the living God, this is the thinking that starts to happen. You start to immediately, I'll repeat this, you immediately begin to realize the utter opposition of every alternative with regard to God. You begin to understand the utter opposition, the extremity of every alternative when it comes to God.

In other words, you think like this. If there is a God, then my relationship with him is the most important thing. Nothing else matters. His will, see, his eye, his heart. If there is a God, nothing else matters, but my relationship with God. And if there's not a God, everything is meaningless. And everything is up for grabs.

And nothing means anything. And if I don't know whether there is a God or not, there's nothing more important than to find out whether there is. Now that's intense. Most people don't think like that. It's wrestling and until you start wrestling, you're not even in his vicinity, you're not even in the suburbs of the real God. You know, Jacob was already wrestling before he actually saw the face of God.

He was already wrestling a long time before even knew he was with God at all. Don't you think at first he had no idea who this guy was? If you're beginning to even, I don't mean just an encounter, but if you're even beginning to encounter with God, you focus. There's not God becomes the biggest thing in your life, even if you don't know him. It becomes the biggest thing. The priority, if there is a God, you say it's the most important thing, if there's no God, nothing means anything.

And if I don't know, I've got to find out. That is the first thing. Do you feel that way? Do you see that? Are you wrestling like that until you are? You haven't met him. Secondly, the contradiction. All right, follow me on this. Now, anybody who does begin to ask real questions about

God, I don't mean people who are raised in nice little religious communities and who have never seen if God is real, that's the most important thing. As soon as you start to think like that, you start to question God. You start to ask questions. You start to ask point of questions. You start to say, well, now wait a minute. Why, if you're a good God, would you let this happen? Why?

You start asking questions. You see? You start saying, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? You start to argue with him. Anybody who's meeting a real God does that. But watch out. Because in this world, especially the world we live, Manhattan,

the world of educated, secular, Western people, people love to use the word struggle and wrestle. People always wrestling with issues. Have you ever noticed that? It's very popular. You can't imagine 50 years ago, people ever... Can you imagine 50 years ago, people talking about I'm wrestling with the issue, everybody else would say, what? But see now, we're wrestling.

And people like to say, I wrestle with these issues. I don't know if there is a God, because God does this and God does that if there is a God. And people think they're wrestling, but they're not, because here's the point. You are not in a wrestling match, unless God contradicts you. You're not in a wrestling match yet. You're not really encountering personally the real God. If only you're allowed to question him and he's not allowed to question you. You're allowed to contradict him, but he's not allowed to contradict you.

And here's what I mean. When somebody says to me, oh, I really wrestle with these things. And I have decided that I cannot believe in a God who would send people to hell for not believing in Jesus. Let's use that as an example. really wrestle with these things. And I have decided that I cannot believe in a God who would send people to hell for not believing in Jesus. Let's use the as an example. I wrestle and I cannot believe in a God who would send people to hell for not believing in Jesus.

Now, let me ask you a quick question. Is it possible that if there was a real God, he might differ from you in a place where you have deep feelings, right? Is it possible? Of course it's possible. So here's the second question. How will you ever know? Because what you have done is you have an epistemology. Now that's how you know. You have said, I won't believe in things in the Bible that I consider violent or narrow, or primitive, or not modern. I can't believe in a guy like that. I can't believe in a guy like, you don't have a personal

relationship with him yet. You're not even close. You're not wrestling with him. You don't have a living God because you have a God that can't contradict you at all. You wait. If there's a real God, couldn't he be different than your deepest feelings? Of course, if he's real, you'd have to be.

But if you only believe in a God who fits in with your deepest feelings, you haven't encountered him yet. You couldn't have encountered him yet. So if you go through the Bible and pick and choose what parts of the revelation of God, that's what the Bible claims to be, what parts of the revelation of God, that's what the Bible claims to be. You like and what part you feel like is primitive or outdated or you don't have God yet, you haven't even come close.

You're not wrestling with God. Don't say you're wrestling with God. You might be wrestling with this issue. You're not. You haven't had a personal encounter with God. So you're willing to say, there are some places where I will let him question me. It's not right to say, I can question his ways, he can't question mine. To set up your epistemology so that you can say, I don't like your ways, but he can't turn to you

and say, I don't like yours either. That's not a personal relationship. I've done marriage counseling and very often I've found two people who've lived together for years and one had the other one cowed. Usually very often not always, but very often it could be the husband who just hasn't listened to what the wife really feels. And sometimes not until they actually start fighting because she's starting to speak up, that he thinks things are falling apart when for the first time they're having a personal relationship.

He's relating to her as a person instead of the little image he has of her. And let me tell you, if you cannot look at something in the Bible and without saying, well, that's, I can't believe that, you don't have a God who's personal because you haven't got a God who can contradict you. You don't have a God at all, except one that you just made. But in the third part of wrestling, wrestling, see, no, we're on wrestling, is agony. And here's the problem with this. One of the things that is very difficult to understand

is why, if God was, and we'll show in a second, let me get to the next point, we'll see this. Why, if God was trying to reveal something to Jacob, if he was trying to show who he was? He was trying to humble him. Why didn't God just show up? Put on the lights. Why did God come in the dark? In the dark.

Why did God wrestle with him? Why did God hurt him? Why did God put him into agony? Why did God do it so gradually? Now I don't know. But I do know this, there's not a person that I've ever met who has found absolute joy in God who didn't say, I needed pain

before I could find that joy. I'm a parent and we know as parents, those of you who are parents know this, as your kids are growing up, especially when they get kind of grown up, you see a lack of wisdom, a lack of humility, and a lack of love, and you say, this is going to create problems in their life. If only I had the power of God to intervene and just give them the information they needed.

If only I just had the power to intervene and give them the information they needed. Well, God came to earth, and He had that needed, what God came to earth. And he had that power, and he didn't do it. The thing that is so hard for a parent to watch is that the very problems are created by a lack of humility, love, and wisdom are the only things that can teach humility, love and wisdom. There's something about human nature because we're not computers and because we're not animals because we're in the image of God. Those things can't be programmed. They can't be zapped in. There's a greatness about us that even God himself, he set up the rules

and now he honors those rules. Without the pain, without the suffering, we don't become wise. It's impossible because of the way in which he made us, because we can't be programmed. And so terrible things can happen, terrible pain can happen, horrible wrenching, permanent crippling, which is what happened to Jacob. Now do you see you never until troubles come into your life. And your relationship with God was comes the most important thing in your life. And you're willing to admit that God has spoken and that I have got to find a way of submitting to it

though I'm gonna, it's wrestling with it. You see, without all those things, you haven't even begun an encounter with God. In fact, you know what scares me? There's a kind of philosophy, I guess I'd call it generic liberalism. Generic liberalism says, well, you know, you can't know what God says. There are no pad answers, but that is the paddest answer.

That is intellectual laziness. Now I don't have to think. I never have to think. There's no wrestling then. You'll never have a personal relationship with God that way. But then there is a generic conservatism that goes like this. Well, if you're religious, if you do everything right, God won't let your business collapse. If you live a good life, God won't let you be lonely.

If you do everything right, if you obey the rules, God will never let your spouse die when you're both in your 20s. God wouldn't do things like that, and I'll tell you something. You're not going to have a personal relationship with a God like that, either. That's a God of your own making, too. You don't know God unless you've wrestled. Thirdly, and this is the important.

First of all, you won't meet God unless you do it alone. Encounter with God is personal. Secondly, encounter with God is personal wrestling. But thirdly, encounter with God as personal. Secondly, encounter with God as personal wrestling. But thirdly, encounter with God is always losing, but winning through losing. The most astounding and most paradoxical part of this whole story is the issue of outcome. This is a wrestling match, okay? It's a wrestling match. Who won? And as soon as you begin to ask the text that question, oh, and I have been doing that, the mind goes crazy.

Let me break it down for you. First of all, who was stronger? Well, there seems to be almost a contradiction because, as you probably have noticed, that at one place it says, when he, the Lord, saw he could not overcome Jacob. And then there's another place where God is saying, let me go. So on the one hand, it seems like for some reason God doesn't seem to be any more powerful

than Jacob, and yet, and yet, the key that shows that there's a contradiction there, is it says, when the man saw he could not ever power him, this is the contradiction right in the middle of the sentence, it says, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip and it was wrenched out of joint. It doesn't say he pulled it. It doesn't say he took a huge stick or a great big rock and smashed it. It says, Ding. And Jacob was crippled forever. Now what does that show? That show's God was enormously strong. And that all he was doing was he was keeping his power down, so far down that he didn't destroy Jacob.

Well, let me ask another question, who won? Who won? Well, God says you won. God says you have wrestled with God and you have overcome. you won. God says you have wrestle with God and you have overcome, you won. And yet God gets up and walks away and Jacob gets up. He's lame, he's lame forever, he's limping, he's crippled. That's winning. The answer is both Jacob and the Lord won.

But they won through losing and that's the meaning of life and that's the gospel and that's how you're going to find him. Look at Jacob first thing, look. What do you mean Jacob won, but he won through losing? Jacob, at first Jacob probably did not know who this was, and therefore he was trying to win through strength. Hear me, strength. How do you try to win through strength?

Well, if you've been attacked at night, the only way to win by strength is either to kill your opponent or escape your opponent, either way you've won. And so through strength, he was trying to win by either killing or escaping, but he couldn't. He couldn't do it. You know, hours and hours. Then finally, began to dawn on him, this was the Lord.

Now, we don't know exactly when, but we know when two things happened he knew. The first thing that happened was, the first thing that happened was when he saw the enormous power that this man had veiled underneath. When he just showed incredible strength, and then when he said, the light is coming, I've got to go. And you see, if you look down at verse 30, you see that the Jacob knew what this meant. No one was allowed to see the face of God and live. And he realized, he says, I saw the face of God and I live. He knew who this was. And what did Jacob do? I'll tell you what he did. Suddenly it says, he held on and he said, bless me. And the blessing he asked for, what was the blessing? It was the blessing he got. I saw the face of God. Now you know what happened there? Jacob was converted and here's the reason why.

Do you realize what God has done? Do you see how God brought all of the lines of Jacob's life together? Do you see how God showed him the foundations? Here's what happened. Jacob thought that he was about to wrestle with the man that he'd been fighting with all of his life and God jumped on him. What is God telling him?

Two things. Number one, he's saying, Jacob, don't you see that you have not been really fighting Esau all your life, you've been fighting me. You've been trying to control your life and run it your way. And secondly, he is saying, Jacob, you know the blessing you've been fighting for all your life? It is before you. The real blessing, the blessing you need is not the BCEO, the blessing isn't the land, the blessing isn't the flocks, the blessing isn't the power, the blessing isn't these things.

Do you know, you understand what's going on? Do you know why most of us do not know how to be alone with God, we can't meet God alone. We have no personal relationship with God. You know why? Because when we sit down, we pray, and we run out of things in 10 minutes, and here's why.

Because we think the purpose of prayer is how do I get God to give me the things that I really need to have meaning in life? How do I get God to give me the things that will really make me happy? In other words, prayer, the way most of us practice it, and the way Jacob had practiced it, in fact, the way Jacob had practiced his whole life,

was an exercise in avoiding God. Refusing to see that the only blessing he needed was God himself. And so what happens is only when he's smitten, only when he's struck, only when he's wounded, he suddenly converts. You know why? He converts utterly and completely, not only the strategy for his life, but the goal of his life.

Because here's what he does on the strategy. First thing he does is he grabs hold and he won't let him go. Now, if any of you even had a finger dislocated, you know that at that point, when Jacob was more weak than he'd ever been during the whole night, that's a greater strength, greater courage, greater nerve than he'd had before. He was holding on in weakness. It's much harder to hold on, much harder

when you're hurting like that. In other words, it is far, takes far more greatness to repent than to complain. He held on, but what was he after now? His strategy was for the first time, instead of fighting against God, he was fighting for God. Instead of struggling for independence, he was struggling for dependence, finally. And he says, number one, the first thing he does is he changed his strategy. He says, I'm now going to take the way of weakness.

I'm going to hold on. I'm going to depend instead of fighting for independence. I'm going to depend on God. That took a lot more strength than fighting for independence. Much more strength to repent. Much more strength to submit. Much more manliness. He was, you know, it's so weird.

He became a man. We all do, in a sense, just like we all become brides when we finally meet the real Christ. Oh boy, but then the second thing he changes goal, he says, bless me, bless me. He suddenly says, you're the blessing. Finally I see why I'm so unhappy. You're the blessing. And he gets it. Because all we know is that as the sun was coming up, Jacob just must have seen the outline

because he says, I saw it. So Jacob won through losing. Jacob won through weakness. However, God also won, but through weakness. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, first of all, the Lord wanted to give him the blessing, but he had to give him the blessing only when he repented. He's not a robot, right?

He's not an animal. So God won, but how did he win? He won by his own weakness, the weakness of God, by bringing himself down, by not descending in power and judgment, because if he had done that and one like that, he would have lost Jacob, and he would lose us all. He had a common weakness. He had a commoner straining his glory.

Oh my goodness, do you see what's going on here? Because here's the question, why was Jacob smitten in grace? The smite that he got, the strike, the stroke that he got hurt him, but just enough not to kill him, not to destroy him, but enough to wake him up and make him great. How was it that Jacob, though, who've been fighting with God and rebellion, God, why is it that Jacob was only struck in grace? Why was he struck in justice? Why didn't he get the full blow of what he deserved? And God tells you why when he hits his thigh. Do you know why he hits his thigh? He doesn't hit his arm, doesn't hit his shoulder.

If you want a very interesting exercise, find a concordance and look up every place in the Old Testament where the word thigh is used. And you'll find almost always it's used in a very symbolic meaning. When Abraham sends his servant to go look for a wife for Isaac, he says, swear, Abraham, he says to the servant, swear on my thigh. And the servant puts his hand on Abraham's thigh and swears, why? Abraham says, you're swearing on my descendants. You know what the thigh was in the Near East? The thigh was a euphemistic reference

for the organ of reproduction. And when you swore on your thigh, you were swearing on your descendants. And what God is saying is, oh Jacob, I'm gonna smite you in only in grace because I will smite one of your seed, one of your descendants with the full weight of justice. And you know what, we know, there was one who came

and he stood in the place of the ones, all of us who have fought with God, and this is what we read about him in the book of Isaiah, surely who took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we saw him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our inirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we saw him stricken by God. Smitten by him and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his stripes were healed. Okay, there it is. Do you want to encounter with God? A personal encounter with God? There they all are. A, get alone. Realize that the reason you've been in and out for years is just because you've never met him personally. B, make sure you know. Make sure you know that this is the most important thing in your life. C, come to recognize that all of your life you've been fighting against God and

even when you were religious, you were avoiding him, but you were using Him to get what you thought was the real blessing. That's the reason why your whole life is screwed up. D, see that the reason that God can show you His face and give you the blessing and embrace you, and only won't you engrace is because Jesus Christ stood in your place and He was truly smitten in wrath, injustice, He got the full weight. So, the world only smitten grace because He was smitten in justice. Lastly, once you realize that, get alone and say, it may take me a long time, but I want to see your face. To the degree that you seek Him,

you'll see it. Maybe just the outlines, but you will. Christian friends, I want you to recognize something. God makes you great gradually, and He makes you great through pain, and He makes you great through suffering, but I tell you, He will make you great. You know that Him that I like like to quote goes like this. Somebody just wrote me at the office asked for it. It's a John Newton hymn that goes like this. It says, here I go again, interesting. What a morning. Hmm.

I ask the Lord that I might grow in faith and love in every grace, might more of his salvation know and seek more earnestly his face. I thought that in some favored hour at once, see, at once, he'd answer my request. And by his love's constraining power subdue my sins and give me rest. Instead of this, he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart, and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Lord, why is this, I tremble in cried, wilt thou pursue by warmth to death? To in this way, the Lord replied, I answer prayers for grace and faith.

These in were, I employ from pride and self to set thee free and break thy schemes of earthly joy that thou maest fine, thine all in me. You see, wrestle for dependence. That'll make you great. And say, show me your face. Oh, love that will not let me go. I rest my trembling soul in thee. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would help us see in Jacob's story how we can meet you.

And I pray those of us who have met you can find in Jacob's story how we can see more of And I pray those of us who have met you can find in Jacob's story how we can see more of your face. Simple as that. We Tim Keller at GospelAndLife.com. Just subscribe to the GospelAndLife newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other resources. Again, it's all at GospelAndLife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. This month's sermons were recorded in 1997 and 2017.

The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.