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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get started with today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. Many years ago, many, many, many, many, many years ago, when I first came to know the Lord, right afterwards, I had a real desire for fellowship. I was living in the Bay Area of Northern California. All I had was a motorcycle and a backpack.
It's all that I owned. But I wanted to go back down, back home, see my family, see my friends, get involved in growing in the Lord. So I took a long motorcycle trip from the Bay Area back down to Southern California.
I especially couldn't wait to see my brother. I wanted him to hear this message. Now, I was very green. I was very wet behind the ears. I needed to grow in the Lord. I knew nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And that's a good thing, but it was a bad thing in another sense because I was there to give him advice about his life, and I really didn't have much advice to give. Without going into all of that, the Lord was dealing with me early on about surrendering to Him. I, like so many other Christians that I have met since then, sort of saw Christianity as adding Jesus to my life. Here's my life. Here's my plans.
It's all about my future. And in effect, Jesus Christ had become a spoke in my wheel. I soon discovered He didn't want to be a spoke in my wheel. He wanted to be the very hub of the wheel, that my life was to revolve and rotate around Him, His plan, His purpose, not to have Him added to my life and Him revolving around my purpose. So after that long journey, I was sitting at my parents' house in my previous bedroom, and I was reading through the Bible that I own called Good News for Modern Man. It was the New Testament in modern English.
That's the translation. And I was reading through Matthew. That's the first book. I'm reading through Matthew. I come to chapter 5. I'm going through the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, and I remember distinctly that particular version of the New Testament in the Beatitudes.
And one of them put in that Good News for Modern Man version went like this, Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires. And I stopped. I stopped because I knew I was busted. I was nailed to the wall.
I read that and I went, uh-oh. Now, granted, I was only a week or two old in the Lord, but that particular text reached out and grabbed me. And I had to admit my greatest desire in life was not to do what God requires, but now I wanted it to be. And that was a turning point for me. That was one of those threshold moments, and there would be many more after that, where God was trying to deal with me, skip, I don't want to be a spoke in your wheel.
I want to be the very hub. Are you willing to pray for and make your greatest desire to be what I require? And I remember that afternoon, that summer afternoon in July, very, very, very prominently in my mind. After that moment, I found this book, I still have it, by Andrew Murray called Absolute Surrender.
It's exactly what I needed to read. It's exactly what the Lord was dealing with me on. And in particular, something that jumped out at me, and I'll read it for you, is in that book by Andrew Murray, where he writes this, God wants us to be separate from the world. We are called to come out from the world that hates God, come out for God, and say, Lord, anything for thee. If you say that with prayer and speak that into God's ear, He will accept it and He will teach you what it means. I say again, God will bless you.
You've been praying for blessing, but do remember, there must be absolute surrender. Every tea table shows you that. Why is tea poured into that cup? Because it's empty and it's given up for the tea.
But put ink or vinegar or wine into it and will they pour tea into that vessel? And can God fill you? Can God bless you if you are not absolutely surrendered to Him?
He cannot. Let us believe that God has wonderful blessings for us if He will but stand up for God and say, even with a trembling will, yet with a believing heart, O God, I accept thy demands. I am thine in all that I have. Absolute surrender is what my soul yields to thee by divine grace. Many people who have become Christians are Christians. They're saved by God's grace. And yet, they're still mastered by their own flesh. They're not mastered by God. They're still resisting God's will.
They're still living as though God exists to please them rather than vice versa. I share all of that as an introduction to chapter 32 because we find that God will be, has been, and will be dealing with Jacob on this very issue. Chapter 32 is a turning point for a con man named Jacob. There's already been one turning point and that was at Bethel. Remember Bethel where he had that dream of God some 20 years earlier of the angels of God ascending and descending upon that ladder and he woke up the next day and said, God's here.
I didn't even know it. Well, now he's coming back and the second turning point isn't Bethel but Peniel, Peniel, which means the face of God because of an incident that we're going to read in chapter 32 where God gets a hold of Jacob, in fact wrestles him, in fact cripples him so that after that incident he walks with a limp and we'll see why. It's one of the best things that ever happened to Jacob. Do you know that the Bible says, whom the Lord loves he chastens. He scourges or spanks every son, every child that comes to him.
And you know what? I've learned to thank God for all of the spankings that my gracious, wonderful, loving, heavenly dad dishes out. I've needed every one of them and I've learned from every one of them as Jacob will learn here. Whom the Lord loves he chastens and tonight I think we're going to see that in chapter 32. Now for 20 years Jacob has been outside the land of promise. The land of promise is Canaan.
He's going to give it to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their progeny, the 12 tribes and that nation. He's been outside of the land of promise for 20 years but, mark this, he's been outside of the land of promise but not outside of the hand of promise. God has been with him as he said when he was leaving at Bethel and now he is coming back into the land.
Let me just remind you where he's at. He's up in a place called Gilead and he's going to come down and cross over the Jabbok River, a tributary of the Jordan, and come back into the land that he left. He is between Laban, his uncle, and Esau, his brother, none of which he has a good relationship with. He's between Padan Aram or what is ancient Iraq that would be called Iraq in modern terms, Padan Aram in ancient terms, and he's coming on very difficult territory into the land of Canaan to meet his brother whom he believes is out to kill him because after all 20 years before this his brother Esau said, as soon as the days of mourning for my father are over I'm going to kill that brother of mine.
That's what's in his mind. So that's why I said you could name this chapter between Iraq and a hard place, Iraq and a hard place, between two very, very difficult places. Now he's in between two difficult places. He just left Laban. He's going to meet Esau. He's, as you'll see, very, very scared, frightened like a little child. He's between these two difficult places and God has allowed him to be.
Mark that as well. God has allowed him to be between two difficult places because he has some things to deal with. When I was a kid at Christmas time we'd always have, I remember my parents would bring out nuts. It was a Christmas tradition, but not like shelled nuts. They were nuts in the shells and a little nutcracker next to them you had to crack them yourself. Well I loved that because it gave me something to do.
I was like, to be busy. So I cracked the nuts. I discovered that some nuts were harder to crack than others.
Some shells are just tough and the way the construction of them is and the symmetry and the roundness, it takes more pressure to crack them. Some people, like those nuts, require more pressure. Some people learn easily. Some people do not. And I've discovered God has a class for each type of person, a special classroom.
You think that Padan Aram was the school of hard knocks. What he's going to get here is also a very difficult situation for him, but he's going to discover that God goes before him. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we get back to Skip's teaching, the 1960s promised us an explosion of love and brotherhood, but instead they delivered a nation in turmoil, confusion, and moral decline. Fortunately, God has the solution for our damaged families. And in Beyond the Summer of Love, Relationships in the Real World, Pastor Skip Heitzig gives a biblical guide for marriage and families that can help restore relationships which have been damaged by sin. Beyond the Summer of Love is our thanks for your gift of at least $25 today to help share biblical teaching with more people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig. Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your resources when you give $25 or more today to help reach people around the world with the good news of Jesus through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Let's continue with today's teaching with Pastor Skip. Chapter 32, verse 1. So Jacob went on his way.
That's after the Laban incident, after saying goodbye to him. And the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, this is God's camp. And he called the name of that place Mahanaim, which means double camp. In other words, there's others in this campground, boys. We're not the only ones camping out here. The angels are.
Now, it just says it as a matter of fact. You know, he passed from there and he went to there and the angels of God were there to meet him. Hey, Jacob, how are you doing today?
Good. Angels, great to see you. Now, we discovered back in Chapter 28 that angels were there on Jacob's way out of the land and now Jacob's way into the land, they show up again.
Why? I don't exactly know. It could be that it's showing us that this is a very special land, that the borders are guarded by God's angels. As God even said in Deuteronomy, the eyes, my eyes are on this land, the land of Canaan, Israel, from the beginning of the year to the very end of it. Or it could be simply God's way of saying, I've been watching over you and directing and guiding you all of this time you're going out and now you're coming in.
It was a sign to him. Psalm 34 says, the angel of the Lord encamps, love that, encamps around those who fear him and delivers him. So here's the angels of God that are encamping around him as he's coming back in. In our modern era, angels have been popularized. They've become very popular in the last decade or two, but almost over popularized.
They've gotten to the schmaltzy stage where people just see them as little decorations. Oh, do you like my angel collection? If you have an angel collection, please don't write me an email about this. My mom used to collect angels. I read an article of some woman who had collected like 104,000 angels. She had to move doors and windows and she didn't have enough cabinets so she added an extra room just for her dumb angel collection.
Whatever, whatever you're into. And there's angel sightings. I've heard people say, yeah, the so-and-so was out on the freeway the other day and they tell you this fanciful story. And angel sightings have got about as popular nowadays as Elvis sightings. I don't know if there's like an Elvis angel out there to combine the two. I don't know about that, but one woman who claims to be an angelologist said her guardian angel, I read this in an article, helped her to lose 150 pounds. So new diet plan, the angel plan. I guess you eat angel food cake for the, no, you couldn't do that.
Now I want you to think about something. It says angels met him. Do you know that perhaps you've met an angel before?
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, oh no, no, if I met an angel, I would definitely have realized it. You know, the wings and the white robe, the halo would have given it away. It says in the book of Hebrews, be careful how you entertain strangers or how you show hospitality to strangers and that you should do that because in so doing, the writer of Hebrews says, some have entertained angels unaware or without knowing, without realizing it. The person that you met, that one that you thought was a person could have perhaps been an angel.
Could it be? It says, be careful to show hospitality. Some have entertained angels unaware. Now here it plainly says that the angels met him and so he called the name double camp, mahanaim. Billy Graham calls them secret agents. Angels are God's secret agents.
They do a few things and I'll just sum it up for you. By the way, they're mentioned in 34 books of the Bible, 17 in the Old, 17 in the New. If you look up the word angel, in the Old Testament I believe it's found 103 times.
In the New Testament I believe it's 165 times. 34 books of the Bible all together talk about angels. So they're very real. They are, if I were to give you a definition, non-corporeal, that is non-physical, they're spiritual beings without physical form. However, it would seem that from time to time God clothes them with some ability to share human form so as to interact with humans. Now whenever they have a physical form and a human can see them, they're still magnificent because typically the first thing an angel says when they meet a human is, don't be afraid, fear not, because I'm sure a person goes, even at the amazing, dazzling appearance so often times of these beings. They're God's secret agents.
What do they do? Well, number one, they stand in His presence. They stand in His presence.
Just like kings, queens, presidents have their own troops and entourage around them. There are angels like in Isaiah 6 or in Revelation 4 and 5 that are angels of God's presence that render worship praise to God incessantly. So they stand in His presence. Second, they serve God's people. Hebrews 1 says they are ministering spirits sent by God to minister to those of us who inherit salvation. Angels play an active role in your life. I believe you have guardian angels. They minister, the Bible says, to those who inherit salvation. Now some of us, by some of the things we do, the activities we do, be it skateboarding or maybe you do some radical skiing or snowboarding or mountain bike jumping, maybe you have doubled up angels on you or some kind of massively strong, very attentive angels. The truth is all of us have interacted with them. We aren't aware of it, but God has dispatched them to minister to us who are heirs of salvation. Okay, so they met him.
He called that name Mahanaim, double camp. Then Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother, in the land of Seir. Now Seir is down, if you go east of the Jordan River and you go down in the deserts of Jordan, south of what is ancient Edom, towards Saudi Arabia, you're going to discover Seir. Mount Seir is where Esau went and he evidently had conquered the inhabitants of that land called the Horites and another group called the Hurrians and he had become very successful. God had blessed him and he has, notice the entourage he has coming. Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother, in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, and he commanded them saying, speak thus to my lord, interesting choice of words, my lord Esau, thus your servant, again interesting choice of words, your servant Jacob says, I have dwelt with Laban and stayed there until now. I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male and female servants, hint, hint, hint, and I have sent to tell my lord that I might find favor in your sight. Now Jacob is the one who initiates contact with his brother.
Why? Well remember how they had that falling out when Jacob stole his brother's blessing. Jacob knows there's going to be no peace between he and his brother unless he resolves the issue that he has left unresolved 20 years before when he had to flee because he stole his brother's blessing. Now I do find it interesting that he calls his brother my lord Esau because that's not how he thought about him 20 years before this. Where did he learn this buttering up approach? Where did he learn this kind of flattery from uncle Laban?
20 years of being with Laban, Laban knew how to pour it on. The first time he saw Jacob he goes, oh my, you're my own flesh and blood sent to me by God. And all the time he's figuring out a way to connive and get him to work for him and he does successfully. And then when he's about to leave he says, oh you can't leave. Don't you know God, your God, our God has blessed me because of you.
I'll give you anything you want. He just knew how to butter up Jacob. Jacob learned quite well, was watching this quite attentively.
And I think he's employing the same kind of characteristics to flatter his brother because he doesn't want his brother to kill him. Then verse six, the messengers returned to Jacob saying, we came to your brother Esau and he is also coming to meet you and 400 men are with him. That's not what Jacob wanted to hear. He's thinking, oh man am I toast.
It's curtains for me. So Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed and he divided the people that were with him and the flocks and the herds and the camels into two companies. And he said if Esau comes to the one company and attacks it, then the other company which is left will escape.
Now watch how Jacob operates. He's going to divide his people into two camps and then more camps, four camps later on. And he's anticipating that his brother is going to attack and kill the first camp. Guess which camp he's going to be in personally. Think he'll be in the first one? Oh no, he's going to be way in the back using his children and wives as buffers for him.
A little wuss. That's his approach. He's figuring it all out. He's anticipating it all in his mind. Verse nine, watch this. Then Jacob said, now he's going to pray. This is the first recorded or written, this is the first time we get to hear Jacob pray. I'm not saying it's the first time he prayed. He did pray before.
But now it's recorded for us. So let's read through it and then we'll make comment on it. Jacob said, oh God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the Lord who said to me, return to your country and to your family and I will deal well with you. I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which you have shown your servant for I've crossed over this Jordan with my staff and now I have become two companies. Deliver me I pray from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau for I fear him lest he come and attack me and the mother with the children.
For you have said, I will surely treat you well and make your descendants as the sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for the multitude. Thanks for listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We hope you've been strengthened in your walk with Jesus by today's program. Before we let you go, we want to remind you about this month's resources that will help you understand and follow God's plan for your relationships.
Beyond the Summer of Love, Relationships in the Real World by Pastor Skip Heitzig is our thanks for your support of Connect with Skip Heitzig today. Request your copy when you give $25 or more. Call 800-922-1888. That's 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. And did you know that you can get a weekly devotional and other resources from Pastor Skip sent right to your email inbox?
Simply visit connectwithskip.com and sign up for emails from Skip. Come back next time for more verse by verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast your burdens on the cross. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
