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And I, in my turn, thank you very sincerely. I thank you for your kind endurance. I know by experience the hardness of the pews in this church. And the preaching has been inordinately long, and I think it must be that you haven't squealed once to my elders because I have heard no complaints from them. So if you can manage to stick it out again this evening without complaining to my elders, I should be able to go off tomorrow with a clear conscience. Tonight we read together from the book of Genesis once more, from chapter uh thirty two. Chapter uh thirty two and verse 22.
And he rose up that night and took his two wives and his two handmaids and his eleven children and passed over the ford of Jabbok. And he took them and sent them over the stream and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh. And the hollow of Jacob's thigh was strained as he wrestled with him.
And he said, let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. And he said unto him, what is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel, for thou hast striven with God and with men and hast prevailed. Jacob asked him and said, tell me, I pray thee, thy name.
And he said, wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. Jacob called the name of the place Peneel, for he said, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved. And the sun rose upon him as he passed over Penuel, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore, the children of Israel, eat not the sinew of the hip, which is upon the hollow of the thigh until this day, because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip.
God used these ancient stories to talk to our hearts this evening. Without any doubt, one of the great stumbling blocks in the path of those who do not believe is the unsatisfactory way of life and the unsat- satisfactory personalities of those who profess religion. For it is not seldom the case that a man who makes no profession of religion at all outshines in his personality and behavior those that do.
All of us, I suspect, could think as we sit here of men and women that we have known. Decent, honorable, worthy figures, magnanimous and generous, honest and law-abiding, always ready to do a hand's turn to their fellow man, and yet with all no glimmer of faith and no pretense whatsoever at being religious. We have known, on the other hand, men who have been loud in their profession of religious faith, that have nevertheless been mean and cowardly and difficult to get on with and cunning.
Two such men we were thinking about here last week, as we thought about the lives of Esau and Jacob. Esau, for all his profanity and lack of respect for spiritual and sacred things, was an honorable man, generous to a floor. When Esau tricked him and cheated him, nevertheless and in spite of it, Esau, with wonderful magnanimity and generosity, forgave Esau. He was a big enough man to do it. Forgave Jacob, I mean, for he was a big enough man to do it. Whereas Jacob... Jacob was one of those unfortunate people.
They seemed to be born with a kind of a fear complex, and out of that fear came cunning and subtlety and deviousness and deceit, so that the man was not only a sinner, he was a contemptible sinner. In his sinning, he wasn't even grand and courageous and bold, but mean and little and contemptible. Now I want to say at once... that the Bible makes no attempt to hide these things. No attempt to maintain a position that all who have faith in God are charming people.
Indeed, the Bible goes, if anything, to the other extreme and advertises it publicly, that men who have professed to believe in God have on times been despicable sinners. The Bible makes no excuse for it. But then the Bible does offer reasons why that is. We may care to think of them before God here this evening. Why is it that people who profess religion, who profess to believe in God, can so often be contemptible, contemptible sinners and difficult characters?
The first thing to notice is that, uh, being religious is not necessarily the same thing as being born again, as being regenerate. Religion, of course, is not necessarily bad. Religion can be a very noble thing, a very virtuous thing. The higher forms of religion can be ennobling and purifying. But when it comes to that vital necessity of the human heart and spirit to be regenerate, to be made anew, then the highest religion must admit itself utterly bankrupt.
Religion is one thing. Being born again of God's Holy Spirit is another thing altogether. And moreover, the Bible is very clear on this, and common sense ought to show it to us anyway, that while religion can be good, religion can be an exceedingly evil thing. If we want evidence of that, we have only to think of the barbarous practices of some ancient nation. There were those, for instance, in the past who, with great religious awe and enthusiasm, worshipped the old pagan god Moloch. And one form of their worship was to take their infants and put them on the outstretched hands of a great metal image and light fires under the hands of those image until they were sizzling hot, and the ba- babies used to sizzle to death.
Don't need any persuasion to, to tell us that such religion is fearfully evil. But religion can still be evil, even when outwardly it professes a high moral code. Take, for example, the story that is told us here in the book of Genesis and chapter thirty four. It is a story about twelve men who profess to believe in God, the true God of heaven, profess to believe in his law, profess to believe in the rights of his religion. And yet it is a story of such indescribable wickedness that I would almost blush to relate it in your presence here this evening, and yet I must so do.
We must not be holier than God. We must not fear to tear off the screens that sometimes hide the evil behind a religious heart. Jacob had a daughter called Dinah, and when they moved home and came to a certain part of the land near Shechem, Dinah went out to see the girls of the countryside. The prince of Shechem fell in love with her. With the impatience of youth, he lay with her. For all that, he was an honorable young man and was genuinely in love with the girl.
And so he spoke to her father. He wished Dinah for his wife. But then Dinah's twelve brethren got to hear of it, and they were deeply angry. Angry, they said, because of the immorality of the thing, treating their sister like a girl off the streets. Angry because the people of Shechem were not part of their religion. They belonged to another religion, and the thought of their daughter marrying into some other religion filled them with religious anger. And they said to the men of Shechem, no, we couldn't possibly let our daughter marry your son unless you submit to our religion and join our religion and go through the rites of our religion.
And what might they be, said the King of Shechem. Well, in our religion, to join our religion, you have to be circumcised. Oh. And even there, the discerning may see the terrible bankruptcy of this bit of religion. No word to this pagan King of Shechem about the real true God of heaven. No word of gospel from his lips. No word of the need to be regenerate inside. Merely a question of changing your religion and going through some religious ceremony so that now you're in our gang instead of being in their gang.
The elder. elders of the city of Shechem thought the matter over. They were middle-aged men. It was long since, since they had looked at things through the idealism of a young man in love. But they thought that, uh, we could take a sensible view of the situation, be tolerant in religious matters. Yes, uh, and then, you see, there would be political advantage in it, wouldn't it? And possibly economic, because if we submitted to their religious light, ri- right and ceremony, well, then eventually we should all be one, shouldn't we? And the country would be at peace. How nice it would be. So they agreed with the twelve sons of Jacob that the men of Shechem would submit to their religious right of being circumcised.
Side. As far as it went, it didn't go very far. It was honest. Ah, what a ghastly thing hid behind the so-called religion of these sons of Jacob. They waited until the operation had been perf- performed, and the men were sore and could not defend themselves, and they rose up and slaughtered every man in Shechem City. Ran off with their goods and beauty. That's religion for you, said the people of the neighborhood. That's religion. The name of Israel and the religion he professed stank from one end of Palestine to another.
We must learn, God will have us see it, that when people are religious without being regenerate, religion can become an excuse and a cover-up, and indeed the very occasion of some of the most despicable actions of our depraved and fallen human nature. People can get it into their heads that whatever you do to the other side is all right.
You can understand the communist, can't you? With his atheism, believing that no lie, however despicable, no cruelty, however dastardly, matters so long as it's done on a non-communist. But the last six years in Ulster have shown us, haven't they, if we needed to be shown. That same kind of mentality, that it doesn't matter what you do to the other lot, because we are standing for the truth. We are the true religion. And if it's in the cause of true religion, well, an odd lie here and an odd bit of cruelty there doesn't really matter.
And the thing stinks today, as it stank in Jacob's day. We have to learn that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wrath that pretends to be angry at immorality has to be watched very closely. Unless, in the last analysis, it is but the peevish revenge of unregenerate Religion.
And what a caricature the whole business was. When Jacob's sons behaved as they did in the name of religion, of course, Jacob and his family had to move. It was no longer safe to remain in the area. And Jacob thought it was about time he had a spiritual spring clean in his family and called the family together to Bethel to examine their hearts before God. Look here, he said, it is time we put away the idols out of our own lives, isn't it? There they were. He dragged them out of their tents, out of their lounges and drawing rooms and bedrooms. Old pagan idols, as pagan as you could find anywhere. Very selfsame men, but in their great indignation and support of religion, had butchered Shekhar, were themselves old idolaters without any living faith in the true God.
No personal experience of the true God, just worshiping their own set of idols. It means that we need to challenge our hearts. Why is it that sometimes those who profess the name of the re- of religion are a stumbling block to the unbeliever? It can be this. That it is possible to be religious, show a great deal of religious zeal, and never to have had personal experience of the regenerating power and grace of God.
Let me say it to us all. If I came into your lounge, into your bedroom, if I could come to the inner recesses of your heart and you to mine. For all your religion, where should I find your faith, and in what? In a savior, personally, personally known? Should I find there a broken heart of contrition bewailing your own sin, and owning all your salvation to Christ.
Should I find you, in the last analysis, putting your trust in the works of your own hands and the mere outward ceremonies of your particular church. Israel's sons, then, I say, were as unregenerate as the man in the moon. And that they proceeded to demonstrate, for the history of Genesis as it proceeds tells us, that filled with envy, they betrayed and sold the very savior and Messiah that God had sent them.
All the while they were diligently practicing their religious rights. What happened to them, it is common historical knowledge, happened to their successors. When at last God sent the savior, the Messiah, Savior of the world, his own very brethren and nation rejected him, steeped as they were in the honorable religion of Judaism, but moved with envy and religious pride, they rejected their very God-sent savior.
Oh, don't be surprised, idiot. I don't preach thus as a Christian preacher as though we had reason for pride as being superior as Christians over Jews. How many folks there are who, if asked, would say the same as a good man who came to me after a lecture once, and he said, you know, with great Irish, uh, courtesy, how good the Irish are at being courteous. He said, I enjoyed your lecture, sir, very much. It's just one little bit. I don't like that, that business about being sad. I'm Christian, of course, he said.
I said, how odd. You will know what the name Jesus means, sir, won't you? Well, he didn't actually. He sent his children to Sunday school. He hastened to tell me, good that he had gone himself. I said, it means savior. And you, sir, believe in one whose name is savior, that you don't like the idea or word of being saved. Oh, come. Yes, there is a happy side to the story. Joseph's brethren, one day, so the ancient story tells us, were reconciled to him and found in him their own savior and the savior of the world.
And God gives us good grounds for believing in his holy word, that the nation as a whole, that unique and wonderful Jewish nation, shall, like those early Jews, find their Messiah in Jesus, find him their own national savior, find him the world's savior, find him their personal savior. It will happen, and at length under God's discipline, they have been brought to their knees to find the bankruptcy of mere religion, the bankruptcy of outward ceremony and form and circumcision, however revered, the bankruptcy in itself, even of that holy law of God, when it comes to changing a man's heart.
Yes, they shall be saved, when in their misery they find themselves in their sinership. Look unto him whom they have pierced. And taking their place humbly beside the sinners of the Gentiles, and turning from religion to Christ. Say at length that he was wounded for our transgression, bruised for our iniquity. Chastisement of our peace was upon him. With his stripes we are healed.
But then there is another reason, is there not, why sometimes those who profess the name of God behave less well than they should, and are difficult characters, and therefore put a stumbling block in the way of those that are not believers. And that is this, that real as God's salvation is, when a man comes in repentance and faith to Christ and trusts Christ and is born again and receives eternal life, that does not make him sinlessly perfect forthwith, does it? The glory of God's salvation is that he is prepared to accept us as we are.
So be it we come in genuine repentance, with genuine willingness to be saved, with genuine willingness that God begin that great work of saving us. Take us as we are. Give us the eternal security of love. Will give us his new life within, so that we become children of God. But yet it doesn't mean that we are sinlessly perfect forthwith. Many is a mile of spiritual pilgrimage that lies in front of the believer when he comes to Christ. And therefore, as you look at a man or woman who professes to belong to the Savior, before you decide about them, you need to know, do you not?
How far sin had wrecked them before they came to Christ. Before you can judge how much progress they have made since they came to Christ. You see, we are all sinners, are we not? But then sin has wrecked some of us in different ways from others. You, sir, you're not given to licentiousness and debauchery. You feel quite strong about moral rearmament. You would be the first to admit, I hope you would, but that nevertheless you are a sinner.
But sin hasn't wrecked you quite in the same spot as it has wrecked that poor, bedraggled, besotted, debauched man in the dosh house. Perhaps I see here a good woman. She had a most unfortunate past. Her family have a long history of mental weakness. Heredity was against her from the start. She was born almost with an inbuilt inferiority complex.
It has haunted her and tortured her all her days and made her crabbed and difficult to get on with and suspicious and devious. That poor woman, not a pleasant personality, perhaps has trusted Christ. Christ, in his magnanimity and grace, has received. One day she shall shine. She shall be conformed to the image of Christ. This is the love of God. This is the covenant of Christ. He will make her like himself. But already has he received her, already begun to pour the love of God into her heart.
Ah yes, it's not complete. And of a Monday morning, if you're not careful, you can start that old complex going again, and she'll bite your very head off. In her heart of hearts, yes, she has abandoned faith in herself, and the miracle of regeneration has happened. Her faith has been turned over to Christ. There's another man. When he was born, it was with a silver spoon in his mouth. Of a family sound in health and sound in wealth.
He had none of the frustrations of poverty. He had a loving mother and a sensible father and a good education. And he's a well-rounded personality and an exceedingly likable chap. Oh, you'll prefer to be in his company any day of the week, and that other crab of woman. But simply because he's a decent chap. He hasn't realized yet that this is mere natural decency. Has found no need of a savior.
But he's a sinner still. What you see is the mere temporary affability of a human nature not too badly wrecked, but fallen and as yet unredeemed, and as yet unrepentant. And if he finishes life like that, it will be to perish forever.
We need to lay hold of these things, do we not? I ask us in the name of God, and you especially, you who are such lovely people, such rounded personalities, I'm not flattering you. The decent and the kind, and all your neighbors respect you. Oh, but I implore you. Have you made sure that your character is built on experience of the grace of God in salvation? It springs from a heart that's regenerate, indwelt by God's Holy Spirit, on its way to be conformed to Christ.
Or is your niceness of character mere natural niceness, hiding an unregenerate heart away from God, one day to pay. Jacob was a difficult character by any, any standard, and certainly not all at once was his character made perfect. And God is not afraid to write his history at large and in detail, and tell us at length how faltering were his steps in his spiritual pilgrimage. Jacob was at least a man who did have personal faith in God his Savior.
Let me retrace for you some of the special experiences of his life. And God appeared to him many times, and first and noticeably in that great vision at Bethel, when he saw the angels of God ascending and descending upon the ladder that reached towards heaven, and found God standing in his very place. It was to start a life of faith. Oh yes, you may say it was very crude faith.
And it was all mixed up with all kinds of dross. Yes, that's true of everybody. It was true of the Apostle Peter himself, that even when he first believed Christ, his faith was mixed with all kinds of dross, he tells us, and had constantly to be purified, but he did believe. Jacob believed God as a personal God, who loved him and cared for him, a God who had spoken and to whom Jacob had made the response of faith. The God whose word and whose promise Jacob believed.
There were many religious who had no such personal faith in a personal God. As I tell you the story, I can't help reminding you of that other occasion when our Lord had occasion to quote this very experience of Jacob to another man, just to show that other man the difference between being merely religious and knowing God personally. It was, you remember, Nathaniel, to whom our Lord made the statement, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile. Thou shalt see greater things than these, Nathaniel. Thou shalt see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
It was the pivotal point in Nathaniel's conversion. Oh, he'd been religious before. In fact, at the moment when Philip came a-dancing down the street with his excited message, Nathaniel was sitting under his vine and fig tree, and for all I know, his prayer book was in his hand. He didn't wear his religion on his sleeve. He liked religion to be dignified. And that's what he found wrong with Philip anyway, and the likes of him. Look at the man's excitement, coming dancing down the street and telling everybody, we found him. Disgusting, thought Nathaniel, all this fuss in religion. Listen to the man talking of the great Messiah as if he knew him personally.
No reverence there, you know. Nathaniel thought to God and Messiah as great distant beings. And here was Nathaniel talking about him as though he was his next door neighbor, as if someone you could meet personally and know personally. Daniel didn't like it. He found his intellectual reasons why he shouldn't believe Philip's gospel message. But Philip had bodged it up a bit and got some of his facts wrong. All right, said Philip, all right, old chap, but you come and see for yourself. Scarcely knowing why he did it, Nathaniel left the protection of his fig tree and came to meet what he expected to be a hot gospeler from Nazareth.
Suddenly, I can't tell you how it happened. But Zandl found God in a new way. Not that stylized, formal, distant figure to whom he said his, uh, very distant paternosters. But God was there on the very spot. God focusing on him, omniscience and omnipresence focused right on Nathaniel personally, through Jesus Christ our Lord, suddenly realized that he was known of God, and God knew him through and through.
Knew his arguments, knew his prejudices, knew his heart. Oh, Philip called you when you were under that fig tree. I saw you. Oh, Nathaniel. You shall see bigger things than these, I shall. This is the reality. You shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending. So shall it be. Friend, you know God like that. Christ made God real to you, found your heart exposed, and yet found yourself accepted in Christ.
God has become real, and his word become real, and all those glorious promises given to Jacob of old have become real to you. Yes, indeed, you hope to see greater things. But you found the Savior and look for his coming again. You're a man of faith? You're a woman who's believed? Or are you just formally Religious. When I talk of believing, when I say in God's name that salvation is not by our works, but not by fa- not b- but by faith, you will know, will you not?
That doesn't mean that God thinks sin doesn't matter. It's one of the marks of a man that has really found God, and God has found him. Into that man's life will come with ever increasing force, till it permeates the whole of his conscience, a growing sense of the evil of sin, the bankruptcy of his own nature, and yet corresponding to it with ever growing force, the reality of God's love and his salvation and the work of his spirit. I am not speaking of some morbid introspection.
I am not even speaking of some morbid fear of hell. I am talking of genuine, down to earth conviction of sin. Till a man discovers that sin is exceeding sinful. A man discovers the nastiness, the littleness of his own heart. Loses his religious pride, sense of superiority burns ever more deeply to cast himself solely on the power of God's salvation. That is what being saved is.
It happened to Jacob. Daily lessons came to a crescendo one night in a time of stress, when Jacob was being led back, partly as a result of his own sinfulness, back to his homeland, there to meet the problems that he had left behind because of his devious ways, unsolved all the years. He'd mastered the business world, made himself into a economic success. Now having to meet Esau, he had sent over all that he had, and Jacob was left alone.
It was that night that a hand gripped him. Instinct told him who it was. You can run, you know. You can run through all sorts of passages and devious ways. Friend, God will catch up with you. Before you get over the brink into eternity, God will make you face him. Jacob found himself face to face with God and did what we all do, tried to wriggle.
He'd always been good at wriggling, putting a good face on things, coming up with his explanations, worming himself in and out. He tried to do it with God. You cannot, you cannot wriggle with God. He tried to maneuver him into position as he wrestled back against God. Instinctive, isn't it?
Sir, if you're not saved, and just me, just truly mortal me, if I were to face you and say, are you saved? I'm not going to think about it. I shouldn't be at all surprised if you wriggled. Well, I do the best I can, and I'm better than so and so, and look at those old hypocrites over there. Oh, I've done it myself. I, I know what you, how you feel. You might as well give up. When God gets hold of you, he isn't interested in him over there. He's interested in you.
You can't pull wires with God, not even religious wires. You can't give God a present and persuade him by a gift or two to save you, take your side. You may do that with people like Esau, you can't do it with God. God isn't hard up, you'll never bribe him. How naturally we try. In our moments of need and anxiety and panic, we tell God, oh God, I- I- I'll serve you, I'll- I'll- I'll do anything you say. You cannot buy salvation.
God is not in business. You cannot get it by your merit or by your religion or by your ritual, by your decency. Presently, God touched his thigh, and the legs lost their power. Now he found that God had got him, rather than he had got God. For God, he said, bless me. Bless me. Oh, stifle it not, my friend, the cry that even now in these moments comes in your heart, and you are not saved.
Deep down underneath, whatever you say outside, you would like to be saved and right with your God and Creator. Bless me. Said God to Jacob. Jacob. What's your name? Ah. What was his name? It could have been such a decent name. How he had defiled it.
Jacob could have been in itself quite a pleasing name, but with him he turned it to mean a twister. In days gone by, he had pretended he wasn't Jacob. Now his conscience got busy. He was back in the tent, and there was his old father. His eyes were dim. Jacob had come in with all his paraphernalia on, the old hypocrite. In those hushed moments, sacred moments, when Father Isaac was pr- to pronounce the blessing in the name of God, see the old hypocrite.
Who are you, said Isaac? Who are you? He said, I'm Esau. You can't deceive God like that. What's your name? said God. Who are you? What are you? Out he came, naked, defenseless. There are no more excuses, no more hidings and coverings and play acting.
Just the bare tent. Jacob, he started. Jacob. Oh, how naked he felt. Or was he? Jacob. And what was there? Mean, despicable, cowardly, perjured, sinner. God saw through. Can you become that? There is no sphere in life where it's more easy to play at.
I know Jacob had his own reasons for disguising himself as Esau and for lying as to who he was, pretending he wasn't Jacob, pretending he was Esau. He had his own reasons, but it's natural to religion. The thing that kept the Pharisees in their day from coming to Christ and salvation was just that, play acting, pretending, pretending to be something different than what they were at heart. Oh, friend, why don't we give it up? Why don't we face God? Known just what we are.
Sinners. Bankrupt. Jacobs. What will God do now? There's no ground for blessing him, is it? No, sir. Now, when he's faced the back and faced his sinful self and hangs as a desperate sinner on God, and God saved and forgave him and let him live, changed his name.
You shall be no more Jacob. You shall be Israel. It is an interesting thing that all down the ages, when men have had a real personal experience of God, they have frequently denoted it by changing their names. It was a custom the early Christians adopted in some countries, and particularly in Ireland. We do it to this day. Only originally, when the missionaries first came and they preached the gospel, they found us Irish. I dare say that. They found us Irish with all sorts of pagan names.
And they preached the gospel. People professing to be saved. They said, we'll ditch those old pagan names. We'll give ourselves Christian names. And thank God for every Christian name that indicated a genuine conversion to God. The centuries have rolled by, haven't they? I suspect every one of you here, you've got a Christian name. Is it Mary? Is it John? Mary, who are you?
What's your name? Who are you, sir? You've got a Christian name. Is it real? Yes, I got it when I was baptized as an infant. Ah, yes, I might. Ah. But also, is it real? Who are you? Man or woman that has found the bankruptcy of your fallen nature and sin, come face to face with God in Christ, called on him in repentance and faith for salvation, and is saved you.
And there has come a change. You have been born again. I'm a member of the family of God. The name of Christ one day to be written in your file. Or is your Christian name merely an old shred of a Christianized religion that means absolutely nothing? In these homilies, may God visit us.
Grip us as he gripped Jacob. Let him look into my heart. Let him look into yours. Let him say to me as now to you. What is your name? And as we know our hearts, in the reality, underneath all the outward disguises, let us make our response to them.
Oh God, what am I? My name is sinner, nasty, mean, lurid, maybe. No ground at all to save myself. Only this, that in your infinite love, you have loved even me. Oh God, bless me, save me. And friend, it's worth it.
For if tonight so you call, God's word stands that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be safe. saved. You shall not need to cover and pretend anymore. So we pray. Father, we thank thee now that thou art the same God, thou God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the same today as then, with thine holiness unabated, with thine infinite love surging unrestricted.
We pray now in these moments that thou wilt indeed draw near to everyone here before thee. Grant us now quiet of spirit, courage of heart, and honesty to face ourselves without pretence, without hiding, to look into thy very face. O God, how we thank thee it is possible to do so and live, since Jesus thy son has died, made it possible for thee to be just and yet the justifier of him that has taken Jesus.
So be it then tonight we beseech thee. We who know thee and have known thee long since, O Lord, we bear our breasts again before thee, where we have dishonored thy name since we trusted thy son, we seek thy forgiveness. Pray, Lord, that in these coming days thou will go on to perfect thy holy work in our hearts, according to thy covenant, for thou hast conformed us to Christ. Lord, if any of us yet are religious and not saved, oh, speak to us now, we beseech it, that tonight we may end our faith in self and begin the great experience of salvation as we call for salvation on the name of the Lord and ourselves.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Our Amen. midst of men.
