Now the context, for those who may not have been here, is that Jacob grows up with a twin brother. Issa, he and Issa are rivals. It's a fierce rivalry. He ends up conniving and stealing his brothers. It was called a birthright blessing. His brother is so angry about it that he wants to kill him. He is literally pleased for his life. He has been gone 20 years, hundreds of miles away, under the household of an uncle. There he marries, he has children, he becomes very prosperous, and now he's headed back to his homeland where he has to encounter his brother. Again, that's the passage we come up on, chapter 32, the book of Genesis. Now as Jacob went on his way, the angels of God met him, and Jacob said when he saw them, this is God's camp. He named the place Mahanam, then Jacob sent messengers before him to his brother Issa in the land of the country of Edom. He also commanded them saying, thus shall you say to my Lord Issa, I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. I have oxen, donkeys, male and female servants, and I have sent to tell my Lord that I may find favor in your sight. Now the messengers returned to Jacob saying, we came to your brother Issa, and furthermore, he is coming to meet you, and 400 men are with him. Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed, and he divided the people who are with him and the flocks and the herds and the camels into two companies. He said, if Issa comes to the one company and attacks it, then the company which is left will escape. And Jacob said, oh God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who did say to me return to your country and to your relatives and I will prosper you. I am unworthy of all the loving kindness and of all the faithfulness which now is shown to thy servant. So with my staff only I cross this Jordan, and now I have become to company, deliver me I pray from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Issa, for I fear him, lest he come and attack me and the mothers with the children. Without it say, I will surely prosper you and make your descendants as the sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for multitude. So he spent the night there and then he selected from what he had with him a present for his brother Issa, 200 female goats, 20 male goats, 200 used, 20 rams, 30 milking camels and they are called, 40 cows, 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys, 10 male donkeys, and he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself. And said to his servants, pass on before me and put a space between drove. And he commanded the one in front saying when my brother Issa meets you and asks you saying to whom do you belong and where are you going and to whom do these animals belong. Then you shall say these belong to your servant Jacob. It is a present sent to my Lord Issa and behold Jacob is behind us. And he commanded the second and the third, likewise, for he said, I will appease him with the present that goes before me. Then afterward I will see his face, perhaps he will accept me. So the present passed on before him while he himself spent that night in the camp. Now he arose that same night and took his two wives and his two maids and his 11 children and crossed the fort of the Jabuck River. And he took them and sent them across the stream and he sent across whatever he had. Then Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. And when he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, let me go for the dawn is breaking, but he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. He said to him, what is your name? Jacob, your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and you have prevailed. Then Jacob asked, please tell me your name. And he said, why is it that you ask my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob named the place penile where he said, I have seen God face to face. Yet my life has been preserved. Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over and he was limping on his thigh. And therefore, to this day, the sons of Israel don't eat that flesh of the thigh because he touched that part of Jacob's thigh in the sin of the hips. Amen, and may God bless this reading of his holy, inspired and intralible words. Amen, be seated, please. In Citrus County, this week there were some bonafide legitimate big shots. Baseball luminaries like Cal Ripken, Jr. Jason Giambi, Al Kayline, figures like that were at the Ted Williams Museum. How about a rock pressure canyon on, was it Tuesday, Wednesday night, Tony Dungee, the former coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who was much, was much respected. He was in Citrus County, many of you saw him. And to top it off, you know who else was in Citrus County this week? Nick Carter. Now, how many of you know who Nick Carter is? Raise your hand. Nick Carter is real high. I want to say real high. See, some of you are just unmoved by the fact that Nick Carter was here. Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boy was eating in crackers this week in Citrus County. You saw him? Okay. Life just couldn't be that good. You know, there is, I mean, it is fun to get face to face, to have an encounter with somebody who's famous. We'll face it. It is fun. And I mean, I had a friend this year who got asked to come to the White House and meet with the president. And I thought that was, I mean, I didn't brag about that. It wasn't me. My friend. I even have friends that, you know, if you have friends that meet with famous people, you know, that's even good enough. For us to get excited about. So, you know, if you encounter somebody who's famous, I mean, that's fun and that's memorable. It's exciting. But you know what it rarely is? It's rarely life changing. In Genesis chapter 32, we meet life changing. There is an encounter there that is the penultimate encounter. It's to go face to face with the Almighty. That's our question this morning. You can grow up going to church, Sunday school, Christian school, church camps. You can believe the doctrine. You can give a scent to it. And you can know about God. And you can, in a sense, know God. And yet it's something else to say that I have met. I have encountered. I have gone face to face with the living God. And I want to ask this morning, you know, are you willing to go there? Are you willing to make it your prayer? Lord, I want to know you. I don't just want to know about you. I don't just want to do church. I just want to, you know, change some of my life, conform to what a Christian looks like. I mean, could there really be relationship with you? Could I know you face to face? You know, man to man, person to person. I guess I want to ask first before we go any further. Are you willing to at least make that your prayer? Lord, I want to know you. Now, I really think if you're honest, you have to say there's a part of you that doesn't want to pray that because there's usually a comfort level with our lives. One of the things we're going to talk about is we go further in the services. We usually have to be fairly uncomfortable to pray that prayer. Something has to be pretty desperate in our lives where we'll say, God, I really kind of want to open completely up and let you come in. Because for the most part, I don't know that I want to, I don't know that I want to do face to face with you. Not that much because you're God. Like in Lewis's Narnia Chronicles, when they meet the Christ figure, he's a what? He's a lion. Who can say, I want to meet a lion face to face. I just want to drop into the cage and grab that lion by the main and look him right in the face. Who says that? Anybody that says that's never done it. I just want to meet God. Even in Lewis's account of this as one, the Christ figure who appears as a lion, when the children meet the lion, their question is, is he safe? And he's a lion. Is he safe and the answer is what? No. He's not safe. He's unmanageable. He's not tame. But he's good. So this God, you know, last Sunday afternoon we had a memorial service in this room. And at the end of the service for Charlotte Young, I said to the people here, another funniest thing happened yesterday. I was reading the Citrus County Chronicle and I saw notice it said that Charlotte Young is dead. Don't you believe it? Charlotte Young is more alive than she's ever been. Why would that be? Because she's really doing face to face. The Bible says that even on this side of the grave, even on this side of death, we can meet the living God. I just want to ask before we start, are you willing to pray that? Lord, I want to know you. Nothing else will do. I am to the place in my life where I don't want to do church. I don't want to do religion. I don't want to just hear good sermons and be inspired by the music. I want to walk with you. Will you make that your prayer? It's so let's dig in. Take your sermon outline. We'll start with this to really encounter God, to do face to face with God. It will inescapably be personal. It must be personal. It's something that you must do. You see, there is an imitation of it that we can do in community. But the real thing is personal. Let me explain what I mean. Jacob has left Laban as we said. He has had to make peace with Laban who was pursuing him as he left Pharan or Aram which is about the equivalent of today's Iraq. He gives an idea of the journey he is making. He is traveling from Iraq to Israel. He has been pursued from behind. He has now made peace with Laban. But every step he takes forward is a step toward Issa who is his brother, his sworn enemy, desires to kill him and wants to revenge. As he gets closer, he sends emissaries out to say, let's make some contact here with Issa. Tell him I'm coming and see if we can't smooth this thing over. He sends the emissaries out. They come back with no message from Issa except for they come back and say this. We have seen Issa and he's headed this way with 400 men. He is coming with an army to meet you. And Jacob is always there. He crafts the strategy. The first thing he does, the Bible tells us is he divides his company. He figures out if Issa is coming to obliterate them while he is massacring one half of them, the other half may be able to escape. Then the Bible tells us you'll look at verse 9 and 10 and following chapter 32 that Issa, I mean Jacob, prays. It's a beautiful prayer. It's like we've never heard him pray before. God of my father, you know, Abraham and of my father, Isaac, God you've promised and God you said that we would be a great nation. And you've given prosperity and I crossed over the Jordan to go to Iran and I had nothing but the staff in my hand. That's all I had. Now I'm crossing back over and I'm two companies of people and it's a beautiful prayer. He praises desperately before the Lord's help. Then he begins to marshal an enormous, I mean you can't call this a gift. This is like an endowment of animals and flocks and sheep and domes and camels and male and female and everything he's got. He marshal but he doesn't just send it all in one mass. He sends it in wave, doesn't he? So he sends one messenger out with a quarter of those animals and then another messenger goes maybe an hour or two behind and another messenger a couple hours behind so that it'll be just like the 12 days of Christmas here. It's going to be wave after wave of presents and gifts are going to come and each one is supposed to come and say to Issa. Now these are from your servant, Jacob and Jacob thinking maybe this kind of kindness and generosity will appease my brother and he won't be angry. Then he takes his whole family and he puts them on the other side of the Jabak river, figures again. If Issa attacks, he's going to have to cross the barrier of this river and that's going to take some time. That will give us a little more time to defend ourselves and perhaps the place so all these arrangements made separates and disfamily all his possessions, everything on the other side of the river and then the Bible says in verse 24 of chapter 32 that Jacob is what? He's alone. Take note of that. He's alone. He's just Jacob. Now can you imagine he's waiting? Why would you know who wouldn't want to be alone? It's the day of reckoning the next day. It's the seminal point of his life. He's either going to be dead or he's going to be able to go back and reestablish himself in this land. Everything in his life has come to this day. He wants to be alone. He wants to pray. He wants to think. He wants to plan. He wants to get his head together. He wants to figure out what's up and so he's there and he's alone. And yet in the middle of the night the most bizarre thing happens. Jacob is assaulted. Jacob is attacked. Out of the darkness comes a mysterious stranger and sets upon Jacob. Now here's the first point. You want to encounter the word? No, by the way, we know who that is. Jacob doesn't know who it is yet. So we know who it is. The Bible says that's God. This is a pre-incarnate manifestation of the second person of eternity. If God comes, walks on earth in human flesh, then that's Jesus. This is Jesus. God in the flesh is Jesus. This is Jesus before the New Testament coming into God's business. So this is who has set upon Jacob. Now what's the point? If we're going to encounter the true and living God, it's something that has to happen with us individually. Now it's interesting because in this church, you'll hear a lot of talk about community. I mean you're not worshiping right now individually. You're in a community. There's something about singing and praying in a community. There's something about we need each other. That's a constant refrain of this church. We're walking together. We can't do it individually. The Christian life is not to be meant to be lived individually. People say, it's me and God. I don't need a church. I can worship God in the golf course and all that. Whatever their religion that is, that's not Christianity. That's some whole made religion of their own. All this is supposed to happen. I'm in a beautiful picture of community. This week we had a young girl in our church adopted this week. Now that would be wonder of wonders enough. I mean what a cartwheel over this young one who did not have a home was, now has a home. These parents who didn't have any children now have children. And one beautiful part of this picture is that the whole seventh grade, I believe it was class from our school. Her whole class here at our school went to the court and stood before the judge with her. You know, and I hear stuff like that and I say, I don't care if anything ever happens in ministry again the rest of my life. I can live on that. I mean just once that that happened is enough. God, that's enough. That's the whole gospel in one moment in one snapshot in one picture. Someone who has someone who is an orphan has a family. Someone who is there and has a child. And you orchestrated it, God. And the community was a part of it all. So as much as community is something that we value and we cherish, there is something that has to be done alone personally. Did you know, you ever wonder why sometimes people go to church when they're, you know, they grow up with their family and their family brings them to church and they do all the stuff, you know, in the church camp and Sunday school and everything and they grow up in it. And they don't object to it. They're not like fighting their parents. They grow up in it. It's just part of their environment of growing up. And their family has friends there in the church and it's good. And they may even join the church and whatever doctrines and teachings are taught there, they are sent to them. They're not sitting there see-thing. They don't know. They like it. They like their families in a church and they like going to church and yet when they go to college, they don't go. It's not because they heard some professor and it raised doubts in their minds and some professor steered them off. They just don't go anymore. They don't read their Bible. They don't pray. They don't go to church. Why? Because it was never there. It was never personally there. It was the environment they were in. As long as they're in it, in a matter of fact when they go home they go. But you see, it's the environment. It's not something in them. It's something around them and outside of them that they conform to when they're in it. We know the saying that there's some people who move into a town and they'll hear of a church and somebody invites them for whatever reason. They go to the church and they like it. They like the testimonies. They like the music. They like to want. They're touched by it. It feels right. They begin to raise their kids there and they make friends. Again, they may have been joined. Everything feels right about it and you have two or three years later the company transfers them or whatever they move to a new town. When they get to that new town they never poke up with the church. They don't go to church anymore. They just stop. You see, it can feel like when they were back at the church it could feel like that they were really truly experiencing God. But they weren't experiencing God. They were experiencing other people's experience of God. And that's precious. And that's rich. And that's warm. And that's encouraging. And I mean, that's awesome to see other people's experience of God. It touches our hearts. But if you're really going to meet God, you have to do it yourself. So I just want to ask this morning, try to ask tenderly, have you? Is it yours? Have you done business with God by yourself? I'll do anything to keep from being alone with God. We'll keep the TV on. We'll run the kids all over town for every kind of activity. We'll do anything to keep from being quiet and still and alone. Be still and know that I am God. I don't know that I want to be face to face with the lion. It's frightening. It really is. It's frightening to meet the living God. It undoes us. What does Isaiah say when he has his personal meeting with God? I'm melting down. I'm coming undone. Holy, holy. Try to do it. You know, what happens when somebody gets cancer? They find that they have cancer and it goes out through the church and everybody rushes to their house and says, you will not have to face this one alone. But when they put him on the gurney and wheel him into the operating room, who goes with him? Nobody else has got cancer. Nobody else is going to go on to the night. It's just them. Somebody spouts eyes after many years of marriage and everybody rushes around and it's what they should and say, you know, we're not going to let you be alone, but six months later at three in the morning, guess what? They're alone. And it's not the support of others at that moment. Either God is there with them or he's not. I mean, if we take you out of your environment, we take you away from the community and we drop you into isolation somewhere and you didn't have a Bible and you didn't have anything else. Would you have a personal relationship with the living God? Because you're not just being carried away in something. It's personal to you. That's the first thing. Counter God. It's got to be something that happens in us. Second thing, and this is pretty sobering too, is it will, it involves pain and brokenness and encounter with the living God and escapeively involves pain. It certainly did for Jacob, didn't it? Jacob is trying to get ready to meet his brother. When suddenly he's pounced on and he's in a fight for his life, this mysterious creature is driving him into the ground. I mean, for all Jacob knows, he's about to die. He's a desperate man twisting and fighting and tumbling and grunting. And they're throwing one another. I think one of the great ironies is undoubtedly, what would you do in this situation? You would be crying out for God. God helps me and you wonder if under his breath, the opponent of Jacob is saying, I am. And they are slamming one another and they are fighting together and twisting and battling. And the Bible says something fascinating. It says that Jacob is prevailing. You read that, you might say what? I don't get that. How do you wrestle with a living God and win? Well, do you wrestle with your children when they were little? Who wins? The reason your children sometimes do pretty well is because you don't like jump off the couch on top of your four-year-old and do this old body slam. That's a good way to spend the rest of your life in prison. You don't throw your weight into it. You'll lay on your back or something and you take your weight off because your weight would crush your child. And if your child gets too feisty, all it really takes is kind of a flick and they smash it against the wall or something they realize, you know, I better not kick that in the head. You just, you know, you kind of let them have their way. And in this fight, Jacob is earnestly, aggressively defending himself, driving off this intruder, maybe trying to kill this intruder. Suddenly, the Bible says that there's just a touch from God. And Jacob is what? He's lame. He's named. His hip is shattered. It's destroyed. He's broken. I got to ask you something. What kind of God are we meeting here? This is not the God of which anyone has to do. Who's ever heard of a God who remains the people he loves. This is not the liberal God. The liberal God is the God who loves everybody. He would never heard anybody. He just wants everybody to have cotton candy. You don't want a good time. This is not the conservative God. The conservative God is the God who, if you're obeying him, then he helps you out. You know, God helps those who help themselves. And if you're being responsible, and for the first time in his life, Jacob is being responsible, isn't he? God said, leave Aaron. Go back to your home. Face your brother, Esau. Whether you want to or not do it, because I tell you to. And Jacob goes and obedience. And that's what's got him in this spot in the first place is because he's obeying God. What kind of God when you obey him comes and cripples you? Tonya, this is no God like you've ever met. This is not a God anybody could think of. This is the real God. And the Bible says that the real God comes into our life like a surgeon. Surgeons wound those they care about. Don't they? They cut them open. They use the scalpel. They injure them. They injure them because there's something foul inside that person that has to be extracted. It has to be contended with. It has to be dealt with. And great pain is going to be levied. Offer what end? For healing, for restoration, for good. So the Bible says that God comes as the great surgeon upon the lives of his children, and he will wound them and he will break them. How is he going to take the Jacobs of this world? The defiant one and make them dependent. He has to break them. Do you know what verse 24 says? It's a fascinating thing. It says Jacob was alone and a man wrestled with him when the word wrestled there is the word Jacob. Remember Jacob got that name because in the womb he did what with his brother? He wrestled with his brother. So what the Bible says there is that a man came in the middle of the night and Jacob was with Jacob. How does God like to break people? He seems to like to give them a taste of what they are. He wants to show them. God out, Jacob. You think you can get your way in this world with determination and ingenuity and cunning and savvy? Let me show you something. You are nothing. You are nothing without me. And it's the loving movement of God into Jacob's life that breaks him and makes him dependent. Here is the sober truth is that God will not make us new typically with tender notes of encouragement. Tender notes of encouragement will transform us. God must wrestle us into transformation. But most transformation will not happen without pain. That we will not meet God truly without some desperation. Saul is proud and defiant, religious, educated, and able. What has to happen in Saul's life? He meets the living God and God makes Saul blind. The man who is proud and able that the Jew of Jews can't even see. He can't even walk. He can't even do anything. How often when people cry out, God, why are you doing this? Because I love you son. Because I'm going to make you mine. I'm going to give you myself. But to give you myself, I'm going to have to root out your defiance and your pride and your arrogance. And that means that there's going to be pain. And I am going to injure you. I am going to allow injuries to fall on you. I will break you. And so when that wife runs off with another man and when that business collapses and when that child, that son, that old son that you invested so much in, you have to face the fact that he's addicted to cocaine. Whatever it is that breaks into your life, that crushes you. I'm saying, come on. Come on. Stay on top. Stop fighting. Because this encounter with the living God will inevitably entail pain. I have a friend who was telling me that in his church, a man, a leader in the church has had to confess that he has a problem with women, extramarital relationships, the internet, the whole package. He's an older man. He's been married a long time. He didn't just have his problem in the last year. He's been involved with other women, his whole marriage. He's a leader in the church. And the man has been broken and the man has been repentant and confessing. Up to a point, and recently they stripped away his title of elder, the church disciplines him. They censured him as well as they should. And at this point, the man said, you know, became furious because there are other elders on that session and they are, you know, they're just as bad as I am. See, that's not broken. Because as long as we're still fighting to defend ourselves, then we haven't had our hip touched. We're not laying there saying, there is nothing that can be said about me done to me. I could be accused of whatever that isn't true. And whatever my medicine is, that you want to dish out to me, Lord, whether they come from sources that mean me good or not, I will take it. I surrender, I give up. I have a pastor friend that's out of the ministry right now. He did some dishonest things in his church. And I want to tell you something, the church treated this guy in his family. Horrible. Horrible. When I talk to my friend, I'll be honest with you. I don't want to hear about how the church was horrible to him. If he's broken, all he'll talk about is what he did wrong. You see, as long as you justify, as long as you put the context of your sin and your weakness and your rebellion, you know, there's always factors. There's always contribute. There's always a story to it. There's always a reason it happened. And you're not willing to come to the point and just say, Lord, I surrender, I stop defending myself. And if you've got business in my soul, have thine own way. I will not fight anymore. That has to happen. That's what happens when you meet the living God. And so all the time you encounter people, and you can tell people who have met God because they're broken and people who are maybe sorry for the consequences of what they did, but they have not surrendered. What is it with you? Third. This encounter with the living God must be personal. It will involve brokenness. And the third thing I want to say is God will drive at the main thing. He will go after the main thing. For Jacob, what did he believe was the main thing that had to be dealt with in his life? What was it? What's the crisis he faces the next day? The main thing is his relationship with Issa. You see, for Jacob, Jacob's one of the blessings is whole life. His whole childhood, he grows up and he sees that God, that his father, Isaac loves his older brother. His older brother is favored. His older brother gets the better education. His older brother gets his father's attention. His older brother gets everything. So Jacob has fought his father. He deceives his father. Jacob has fought his brother. Jacob fought his uncle, Laban. Jacob has fought all his life. And now his fight is reaching this pinnacle of battling with Issa. To Jacob, he thinks that's the main thing. But guess what happens in the middle of the night? It's not Issa that comes out of the darkness or two. It's God. And the point of that is to say that Jacob's main battle in your whole life is not what he saw, Laban or Isaac gets with me. You've been striving against me. You've been fighting me your whole life. And the turning point from Jacob comes in the middle of the scrappling and the middle of the fighting when God touches his hip, it's at that moment that Jacob realizes I'm wrestling with God. This is God. And he should have obliterated me. He could have obliterated me. Why has he let me fight him like this for these hours? When all the time he had the power to crush me and in the most remarkable thing happens, if an intruder broke in your house and you are battling them, you would be trying to drive them out of your house. What happens at this turning point in the passage? Jacob no longer is attempting to drive the intruder away, but he does what? He hangs on. He won't let the intruder leave. You want to talk about a transformation? He goes from get away from me, get away from me. I will destroy you to hang on and saying, I will not let you go unless you want. Bless me. Do you see the whole transformation in Jacob's life? Do you see that the theme of Jacob's whole life is blessing? He grew up long for the favor of his father fighting and God has come in the middle of the night and said, Jacob, you're fighting me. Blessing you need, the love, the value, the worth that you need comes from me. I'm the one with whom you have to deal. Jacob dresses himself up and he goes into his father Isaac and Isaac says to him, who are you? You remember that? Who are you? And what does Jacob say? He saw. And then he gets blessed. You notice exactly what happens in this passage? What happens is he's hanging on. You know in the passage God says, you better let me go because the sun is rising. No man sees the face of God and lives. You better let me go. You're flirting with peril, with danger. And Jacob says, I don't care. I'd rather die than let you get away. I'm so desperate. He's thirsty. He's hungry. He's a drowning man at this point. I've got to have the blessing. I've got to have you. It's right back to the time of his father 20 years before. And so this mysterious visitor says to Jacob, what is your name? And Jacob says what? Jacob. And God says, no, it's not. It is real. It's a beautiful picture. And God says, I bless you. The blessing he saw his whole life. Let me just say this is that if you encounter God, he's going to drive to the main thing. There's a lot of people who feel desperate for God, but it's not God they want. It's his help they want. I want God to help me in my marriage. What they really want is a good marriage. You know, I pray because I need God to help me in my business. I pray and go to church because I need God to help me with these teenagers. I'm getting old. I'm afraid of dying. My body is failing. I need God. I like to pray. They'll help me with these doctors appointments and he'll take you. I'm desperate for God because I need him to help me. When you meet the living God, you stop treating God like he's some additive to your life. He's some power source that you can go to to make it. You start saying, God, if my marriage never improves, if my kids never come home, if my illness never gets better, I need you. I don't need your power. I don't need your help. I don't need you to come in and change my environment in circumstances. I need you. I need relationship with you. If I never have good relationship with my spouse, if my boss hates me, if I struggle financially to my last day on this earth, so be it. It's not my passion anymore. I'm not going to use you to come up with a good life. I just want you. That's what happens when you meet the real God. Finally, there's this astonishment that Jacob experiences and countering God will involve an astonishing blessing. I've really so enjoyed, much more than I think I ever did, watching the Winter Olympics. I guess watching with my kids. We've just had a lot of fun with it. It's fastened to the hottest ticket in a city from what I understand is short track skating. It's been the most popular thing there, and it is also the most bizarre. If you watched it about a week ago, you saw a race in which all the people who were way ahead in the race all wiped each other out. Right at the last turn. There's some Australian guy, just surfing along down under no Australians ever won a medal in the Winter Olympics. They don't do a lot of ice skating in Sydney. He goes across the line and raises the gold medal winner. He's on the stand. The Australian anthem is playing. He is the greatest short track speed racer in the world. But everybody knows he was the worst. Look at your Bible. What happens to Genesis chapter 32? If you look at verse 28, it says no longer is your name Jacob, but it's Israel. You know what Israel is? It says Israel because you're the winner. You have fought with God and with men and you what? You want your Jacob. He's like a shattered. He's beaten. He's assaulted. He can't even walk. He's laying in the dirt and God raises his hand. Winner. What's Jacob got to say? He takes away that disgraceful name Jacob and says your name now is winner. He gives Jacob the blessing that he's long for his whole life. You have my favor. Verse 30, Jacob can't believe it. I have seen God face to face and I didn't die. And the face I saw was not the face of anger and judgment and justice. I saw God embrace everything I always wanted. Everything I could only dream of from a father, the favor, the love of being the favorite child. That's what happens when you meet God face to face. And it'll change your life because because really and truly I'm going to tell you something any problem you have in your life. Before we say, if I could get a new spouse, if I could get a new body, if I had more money, if my parents hadn't messed me up, that's a lie. Any problem you have, the issue is your relationship with your maker. All that other stuff can be messed up. This moment in his life, Jacob knows it has the favor of God, which is the one thing we need. How? How? How does God smile at a cheap like this? The Bible says because Jesus came and hung on a cross. Because Jesus wrestled with God in the Garden of Gethsemane. Because Jesus said to the Father, I will not let you go until you bless them. Jacob can wonder why? Why did God just pat me when I deserve the full weight of his rage? The answer to that question is because God reserves the full weight. He throws his full weight on his son and crushes his son so that Jacob would go free. How does the one who deserves the curse get the blessing? It's because the one who deserves the blessing gets the curse. Somehow or another, when you meet God really, that starts to sink in and you wonder. An encounter with God leaves you to wonder. You wonder, you're astonished at mercy, at grace, and at blessing.