Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
Any solution you have to your problems apart from doctrine is a manifestation of both arrogance and irrationality.
Thursday, August 22, 2002
GEN 32:3-8 - he devises a plan to try to appease Esau.
Verses 9-12 - he goes to God in prayer and asks for the Lord to help him.
Verses 13-20 - he develops another plan and totally ignores his prayer toward God.
HEB 4:16 “Let us be approaching the throne of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy and acquire grace with reference to seasonable help.”
JER 33:3 “Call upon Me and I will show you great and mighty things which you have not discovered.”
PSA 50:15 And call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.
LUK 11:9-10 And I say to you, ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it shall be opened.
MAT 21:22 “And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.”
PHI 4:6-7 Stop worrying about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God. And the peace of God which passes all understanding shall garrison your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
MAR 11:24 Therefore, I say to you, “All things for which you ask and pray, believe that you shall receive them, and they will be given to you.”
While Jacob is a believer and back in the will of God, he is still reversionistic in his thinking.
1. Any solution you have to your problems apart from doctrine is a manifestation of both arrogance and irrationality.
2. Divine solutions are the only solutions and human solutions are no solutions.
3. Fear sees the problem; a personal sense of destiny sees the solution.
4. Since problem solving is a major function of the spiritual life of the Church, all divine solutions are related to the problem solving devices in your soul.
5. You were designed to be spiritually independent of human solutions in life.
ROM 15:4 For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
GEN 32:22 - Jacob has now turned from faith to the manifestation of unbelief, from prayer to scheming, from God to his own fleshly devises.
Since he was such a great wrestler, he assumed that there would never be another person better, and therefore some pride was dealt with.
Adonai sabaoth “the Lord of the armies” a title for our Lord Jesus Christ as the protector of Israel.
At Armageddon, REV 19:11-15, He will break his own record, REV 14:19-20; ISA 63:1-3, and kill hundreds of thousands of members of the human race.
At this time there will be maximum slaughter by TLJC, Joel 2:20; EZE 39:11-13 describes the stench.
He must make things right with God before he can face Esau and make things right with him.
Jacobs guilty conscience and his imagination have just been running wild.
2CH 32:31 - God left Hezekiah “alone to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart.”
JOH 8:9 - it was not until the woman caught in adultery was left alone with the Lord that she was set free.
JOH 16:32 Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.
To be left alone with God is the only true way of arriving at an accurate knowledge of ourselves and our ways.
PSA 26:2 Examine me, O Lord, and try me; Test my mind and my heart.
JER 12:3 But Thou knowest me, O Lord; Thou seest me; And Thou dost examine my hearts attitude toward Thee.
2CO 13:5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!
1. A man wrestles with Jacob and does not prevail.
2. Jacob struggles with the man and does prevail.
1. Jacob needed to have his “human-strength” beaten out of him.
2. Jacob has been relying on human strength, human power, human viewpoint, human gimmicks, to try to get blessings in life as well as to solve his problems.
3. Jacob needed to be made conscious of his standing with God so that he would stop conniving, plotting, scheming, and using human solutions to try to solve his problems.
4. God initiates this wrestling match which ends in the defeat of the old Jacob.
Turn to HOS 12:2
Robert R. McLaughlin All Rights Reserved 2002