Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3219
“He blessed him there.” Genesis 32:29.
JACOB had said to the Angel, “Tell me, I pray You, Your name.” In answer to that enquiry, he was gently rebuked. The Angel did not come to ratify Jacob’s curiosity, but He came as a messenger from God with a blessing—“and He blessed him there.” There are a great many things we would like to know when we read the Bible. But if we read it so as to find salvation, that will be much better than having our curiosity gratified. When we come to hear a sermon, too, we should like, perhaps, to meet with some fine passages, or to have some telling anecdotes that we could carry away with us. But if, instead, the Lord’s messenger shall give us a blessing from God, Himself, it will be infinitely better! The disciples, after the Resurrection, wanted to know from the Savior something about the times and seasons, but He did not tell it to them. He said to them, “You shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” That was far better, far more valuable to them—and though for the time it might not please them so much, yet, for all practical purposes, it enriched them far more! Angels’ names we can afford to leave, but God’s blessing we must have and we cannot do without it!
I. Let us just think, for a minute or two, WHAT THIS BLESSING WAS WHICH JACOB GAINED AS THE RESULT OF A NIGHT OF PRAYER.
I wonder whether anybody here has ever spent a night in prayer. Is there a man among us who has ever wrestled with the Angel for so long? Alas, I am afraid to put the question and ask for an answer lest I should only gain one through your silence! Brothers and Sisters, it is not easy to continue for a whole night in prayer. It has been well observed that it is easier to hear a sermon two hours long than to pray for an hour. The more spiritual the exercise, the sooner we tire. Joshua was not weary of fighting in the valley, but Moses’ hands began to grow weary with holding them up in prayer. Yet surely there have been times in our lives, as in that of Jacob’s, when a night of prayer would have been becoming. Surely we have been in as great straits and struggles as he was and have needed the benediction of Heaven as did that much-tried Patriarch. Perhaps it would be well, before long, to try to accomplish this feat and wait, from sunset to sunrise with God. The old knights, before they took a higher degree of knighthood, spent a night in some church and were supposed to be in prayer. He that shall really spend a night in prayer shall win celestial blessings. He shall lie down a Jacob, but he shall rise up a prince! There is a distinct advance from Jacob to Israel, from being a supplanter to being a prince! Prayer gives an incalculable blessing and this is the advance Jacob gained—an incomparable advance in spiritual things.
But besides that, he gained as the blessing attending that night’s prayer, deliverance out of great peril He thought that he and his would have been slain by Esau, but the Angel blessed him and not a single lamb of all his flock was hurt, neither were the women and children put to the slightest fear! Prayer brought down Heaven’s shield to cover Jacob in the hour of danger!
Again, he got what was still better under some aspects, reconciliation with his brother. He had done his brother grievous wrong, but his brother forgave him. I do not know, but I think a Christian would almost sooner be exposed to peril than live under a sense of having committed an injustice. It is a great relief to your mind, when you have done so, to find it all set right again. To think, “I did that man a wrong, but it is gone and forgiven forever,” is a blessing worth praying all night to obtain!
Happy was Jacob, also, to have the breach healed between himself and his brother.To meet him, fall upon his neck and kiss him—to feel that being so near akin they should no longer be divided in heart. Are you divided from your brother? Has any root of bitterness sprung up to trouble you? Have the friendships of life been curdled by dislike? It were well to have a night of prayer to get them back again—and again to serve side by side with your fellows. I take it to be a vast blessing to a Christian to be delivered from the temptation to retaliate, to be saved from all hardness of heart and bitterness of spirit. The Angel, when He gave Jacob that, blessed him, indeed!
Besides all these blessings—in addition to having risen in rank before God, to having had his wrong amended, to having been forgiven by his brother, to being restored to friendship—I do not doubt that from that night a blessing rested upon Jacob’s heart and the dews of that night fed his soul for years to come! He was anointed with fresh oil from that moment! And as he rose, limping upon his thigh, he was not merely a better man by title, but better by nature! He had been away in a far-off country with Laban and much of the dew of his spirit had gone from him. But now that he had got back again into Canaan, the Angel sealed his return by giving him the blessings of the return!