Power With God

Power With God

(No. 2978)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 8TH, 1906.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
SEPTEMBER 16, 1876.

"As a prince have you power with God." Genesis 32:28.

MEN think a great deal of anyone who has power with royalty. If it were
said, concerning somebody in this place, "That individual has very
great power with the Queen," there are a great many of you who would
turn at once to look at that person. He who has great power with an
earthly prince is sure to have many flatterers around him who will pay
him homage for the sake of the advantage which they hope to gain
through his mediation. But, dear Friends, what a far greater honor it
is to have power with the King of kings! Power with men may be an evil
thing, but what blessing must come from power with God! How it ennobles
the soul of the man who possesses it! This man, Jacob, who has power
with God, is called Israel, a prince, for so he is–but princes have no
such dignity as his unless they, too, have power with God, for he is "a
prince of God."

What a comprehensive blessing it must be to have power with God, for he
who has power with God must have power with men! Creatures must submit
where the Creator, Himself, has yielded. If you can have your way with
the Master, you may depend upon it that you can have your way with His
servants. The man who has power with God must be safe. "If God is for
us, who can be against us?" No weapon that is formed against such a man
can prosper and every tongue that rises against him in judgment, he can
condemn, for, having power with God, he shall be able to plant his foot
upon the neck of his adversaries and to reign over those who rebel
against him. Such a man as that cannot be in need. If he has power with
God, he will tell Him about his needs and they shall all be supplied.
He will confess his sins and they will be forgiven. God will deal well
with the man who has power with Him. There is such a wide range of
blessing here that I must not stop to enlarge upon it. If you have
power with God, you will see that this is a weapon which, like the
flaming sword at the gate of the Garden of Eden, turns every way. Or I
may say of it what David said of the sword of Goliath, "There is none
like that; give it to me." Human language can never tell a thousandth
part of the value of power with

God!

I. I want you to note, first, WHAT THIS POWER CANNOT BE. "Power with
God."

You scarcely need to be told that it cannot be anything like physical
force in opposition to God. It is power with God, not power againstGod,
that is mentioned in our text. No creature, however mighty, can have
any power to stand in opposition to Omnipotence. Who are we that we
should ever stand up to oppose the Most High? Let the twig contend with
the fierce flame, or the wax with the burning heat, but let us not
contend with God! If we did so, we should be like the moth in the
candle–utterly consumed. The strongest and the proudest men must be
but as stubble in the day of God's anger. In fact, to think of man
having any power against God is sheer madness, for we have not any
power at all apart from God. We only exist because He wills it. The
breath in our nostrils is His gift, moment by moment. We should go back
to the nothingness from which we sprang if He withdrew, for a single
instant, His sustaining hand! Man has no power against God. O you
foolish sinners who are resisting Him, give up the unequal battle! I
charge you, before God, to count the cost of a contest with your Maker
before you begin it! As well might a potsherd strive with him who molds
it as for you, a creature, to strive with your Creator! He will break
you in pieces, like a potter's vessels, in the day of His anger.
Therefore, be wise and end the fight–and be at peace with Him!

Neither can this "power with God" mean mental power. There are persons
who seem to exalt their intellect even above God Himself! It is a fine
thing to be gifted with powers of argument and to have a keen reasoning
faculty. But, at

the same time, to some people these are very dangerous possessions. I
know certain individuals who say that they will never believe what they
cannot understand. If they adhere to that determination, they will
never believe in their own existence, for they certainly cannot
understand that! They seek to overthrow the Word of God and the
Doctrines of the Gospel with their subtle wit and profound thought, but
it is sheer madness for human folly to contend with Divine Wisdom! It
is insanity carried to the very highest point for even the wisest of
men to think that their intellects are a match for the Omniscience of
God, for, "the foolishness of God is wiser than men." Even the
simplicity of the Gospel– and it is very simple–and "the foolishness
of preaching"–which, in some people's esteem, is utter foolishness,
shall win the victory while those who imagine that they are wise shall
be proved to be fools! Brothers and Sisters, let us never attempt to
argue any case in opposition to God's will, for we cannot have any
power with Him in that way. Let us always surrender our judgment to the
teaching of His Word and conform our will to His will. If we ever think
that a certain course is best, but it is evident, by the working of
God's Providence, that He does not think so, let us not for a single
moment hold a debate with Him, but let us say, as David did, "I was
dumb, I opened not my mouth because You did it." If God does anything,
that is enough for us! If God saysanything, that is enough for us!
Instead of arguing and reasoning, "It is written," or "God has said
it," is sufficient to settle any question that concerns a Christian!

It is almost necessary, in these days of superstition, to say that
neither can any man have any magical power with God,for, albeit that
people nowadays would be ashamed to confess that they believed in
magical arts, yet something very akin to it seems still to exist among
mankind. They suppose that there is some efficacy in the mere
repetition of certain words. I am sure they must think so, for they do
not put their hearts into the words, but they are quite content if they
have galloped through a collect, or some set form of prayer. Another
supposition is that the prayer is all the better for being offered by a
certain individual who is ordained to that particular work, so those
who are sick send for an official to come and "pray for them"–I have
often heard that expression, as though it was thought that this person,
by reading a prayer out of a book, could, by a sort of magic, do the
sick one good! O Sirs, mere words strung together–whether they are in
Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, or English–are of no use before God! It is
the utterance of the heart that He hears, and you must never imagine
that there is any excellence in a certain arrangement of letters and
sounds, or that certain men, by the use of these words, can bring down
blessings from above! Oh, no! Jacob had no abracadabra, no talisman, no
magic, no charm, no enchantment–and God forbid that you and I should
ever be such heathens as to believe that there is any power with God in
any such things! God is not prevailed upon to grant His blessings by
any such fooleries as these–He utterly abhors them!

And, again, when we speak of having power with God, we must not suppose
that any man can have any meritorious power with God. It has been
thought by some people that a man can attain to a certain degree of
merit, and then he will receive Heaven's blessings–if he offers a
certain number of prayers, if he does this, or feels that, or suffers
the other, then he will stand in high favor with God. Many are living
under this delusion and, in their way, are trying to get power with God
by what they are, or do, or suffer! They think they would get power
with God if they were to feel sin more, or if they were to weep more,
or if they were to repent more. It is always something that they are to
do, or something they are to producein themselves which they are to
bring before God so that, when He sees it, He will say, "Now I will
have mercy upon you, and grant you the blessing you crave." O dear
Friends, all this is contrary to the spirit of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ! There is far more power with God in the humble acknowledgment
of sinfulness than in a boastful claim of cleanliness–much more power
in pleading that Grace will forgive than in asking that Justice should
reward–when we plead our emptiness and sin, we plead the truth–but
when we talk about our goodness and meritorious doings, we plead a lie!
And lies can never have any power in the Presence of the God of Truth.
O Brothers and Sisters, let us forever shake off from us, as we would
shake a viper from our hand, all ideas that by any goodness of ours,
which even the Spirit of God might work in us, we should be able to
deserve anything at God's hands and to claim as right anything from the
Justice of our Maker!

II. Now, secondly, let us inquire FROM WHERE THIS POWER PROCEEDS. If
anyone asks, "How can a man have power with God?" The answer is, "Not
because the power is in him, but he can have power with God by reason
of something that is in God."

First, God's people get power with Him from the very Character of God's
Nature. You will soon see what I mean. Have you ever visited a family
in the depths of poverty and found them with a few rags to sleep upon,
with nothing

whatever in the cupboard, with a child dying for lack of food, mother
and father with pinched countenances who tell you that, for the last 48
hours they have had nothing whatever to eat? And have you not felt that
they have had power over you, so that you could not help them? I am
certain that it has been so, if you have a tender heart, and are of a
gracious, generous spirit. The power that they have over you does not
arise from their riches, but quite the reverse–from their poverty.
Their power over you does not lie in their being respectable and
well-to-do–quite the opposite–their power over you lies in their
being in abject distress. Their misery has power to excite your pity!
Because you see them in such a sad state, you, being a man of
compassionate spirit, are straightway moved to try to help them. There
is many a spectacle of suffering and sorrow in this world that even a
strong man cannot bear to look at, especially if he is unable to
relieve those who are in distress. Now, if we, being evil, are so
stirred by the sight of human misery, how much more is our heavenly
Father, who is all goodness, tenderness, gentleness and love, moved to
pity by the miseries of His children? Whenever you and I come to Him,
it is wise for us to plead before Him our weakness, that He may pity it
and make us strong–our poverty, that He may pity it, and enrich
us–our dire necessity, that He may pity it and supply all our
needs–our low estate, our sinking heart, our trembling spirit, our
utter nothingness! In that way we shall have power with Him.

If you have been accustomed to visit the poor, you know how those who
have got to be "old stagers" at receiving charity, never put their best
leg forward when they want to impress you with a due sense of their
need. If they had a little of anything in the house, they would take
care that you did not see it. If there has been any improvement in
their circumstances since you last called upon them, you will have to
fish a long while before you will find it out–but they are very adept
at bringing forward the black side of their case because their power
lies there with those who have generous hearts! And so, Brothers and
Sisters, our power with God, when we come to Him as sinners, lies not
in what we are, but in what God is! He is Love, He is full of pity, He
is Tenderness, He is Gentleness. He wills not the death of a sinner,
but delights to display His saving Mercy, to manifest the abundance of
His Grace. The foundation of our power with God must always lie in the
love and tenderness of God. He is susceptible of pity–yes, He is
Tenderness itself. He is a God of Compassion and, therefore, it is that
the poor, feeble sons of Adam have power with Him!

But we get a further view of the source from where this power with God
proceeds when we reach the next point, namely, God's promises. God has,
in His Word, been pleased to say that He will do this and that and give
this and that. He was quite free, once, to do whatever He pleased, but
now that God has given us His promises, He is not free to break them
and it would be inconsistent with His glorious attributes that He
should do so. Neither will He ever be false to a single syllable that
has gone forth out of His mouth. When God gave His promises, He did, as
it were, put Himself in the power of those who know how to plead the
promises. Every promise is so much strength given to the man who has
faith in the promise, for he may, with it, overcome even the Omnipotent
God Himself! Why, Brothers and Sisters, if your character is what it
should be, and a person comes to you and says, "You promised to give me
such-and-such a thing," has not the person who can say that, power over
you to the full extent of your promise? If you are a true man, he has
beaten you at once! If you say to him, "But when did I give you that
promise? You may have misunderstood what I said," and he puts his hand
in his pocket and brings out your promise in black and white, with your
name signed to it, there is no getting away from that, is there? Now,
that is just the way in which God gives us power with Him, for He has
given us His promises in black and white! Here they are in the Book
which we know to be His Book, His own Infallible Word! It is a blessed
thing to be able to come before God on your knees and to put your
finger on a promise in the Bible, and to say, "Lord, this is what You
have promised that You will do. I beseech You to do it because You are
the God of Truth. I know that You cannot lie, so I remind You of Your
promise and plead with You to do as You have said." Do you not see what
power you have with God when He has given you faith to lay hold upon
Him, bringing His own gracious promise in your hand? There is a
conquering power in faith, because faith pleads the promises of God!

Thus, you see, there are two sources of power–God's Nature and God's
promises.

But the true child of God knows of other sources of power with God, so
next, he pleads the relationships of Grace. God, in His infinite mercy,
has been pleased to choose certain people to be His children. "You
shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." There was no
reason, in themselves, why they should be His sons and daughters, but
His Sovereign Grace adopted them and His Spirit regenerated them. But
the moment that God made any one of us His child, He did again–I speak
with all reverence–give us power with Him and put Himself into our
hands! Who among us does not know the power of a child over his father?
There are some children who have too much power. There is a Greek story
of the little boy who ruled all Athens because he ruled his mother and
his mother ruled his father–and his father ruled the senate and the
senate ruled Athens! And so, in that way, the little boy practically
ruled the whole city! And I am afraid that there are some children who
have a good deal too much power in that way. But our Heavenly Father,
though He is too wise to indulge us in that way, is so good that He
will not deny us any privilege that, by right, belongs to the position
of a child. When your child appeals to you because there is something
that he really needs, but which you have withheld from him, and he
says, at last, "But, my dear father, will you not grant me this?" Or if
you have chastened him and he says, "Father, stay your hand! Am I not
your child?" you cannot resist his appeal. He has power with you–you
know that he has! And what a wonderful power we have when we can truly
say, "Abba! Father!" We shall have power with God in our times of
greatest weakness if we can cry, "Abba! Father!"

I can never forget a certain illness when I had been racked with pain
and brought very low with heaviness of spirit through the nature of the
complaint from which I was suffering. I felt driven almost to despair,
one night, until I laid hold of God, in an agony of prayer, and pleaded
with Him something like this, "If my child were in such anguish as I am
in, I would listen to him and relieve him if I could. You are my
Father, and I am Your child, then will You not treat me like a child?"
Almost at the very moment when I presented that plea before God, my
pain ceased and I fell into a sweet slumber, from which I woke up with,
"Abba! Father!" on my lips and in my heart! I believe that this is an
invincible plea, because, when God calls Himself our Father, He means
it. There are some fathers in this world, who do not act at all as
fathers should–shame upon them! But that will never be said of our
Heavenly Father. He is a true Father and He has a heart of compassion
towards His children. And He does not willingly afflict or grieve the
children of men–and when we know how to appeal to His Fatherhood, we
shall prevail with Him!

Once more, dear Friends, the power that we have with God also springs
from His past actions. Look at what He has done for His own people.
First, He chose them. Well, then, as He chose them, He cannot cast them
away because He is an Immutable God! As He has made His choice, He
stands to it. Paul asks, "Has God cast away His people?" And he answers
his own question, "God has not cast away His people which He foreknew."
That is what He has never done! Then, in addition to choosing us, He
has also redeemed us. And after He has redeemed us from destruction by
the blood of His Son, can He allow us to be lost? Can He pay for us
with such a price as that and yet neglect to keep us to the end? That
cannot be! When He gave His Son as a Ransom for us, He did, indeed, put
Himself into our hands, for, "He that spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give
us all things?" Do but know that God gave His Son for you, dear
Friend–know that Jesus Christ is yours and the logic of your prayer is
clear enough, and forcible enough, when you say, "What can You deny me,
O my Father? You have given me Your Son, so, by His blood and wounds,
by His life and death, and resurrection Glory, give my spirit the Grace
it needs, since You have given me Jesus Christ."

Do you not see, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, that every mercy
which God has bestowed upon you gives you power over Him? "Therefore,
sing with John Newton–

"His love in time past forbids me to think

He'll leave me at last in trouble to sink!

Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review,

Confirms His good pleasure to help me quite through." If He has done so
much for us, will He not do still more? Does not every blessing which
is bestowed by God come to us with this message in its mouth, "There is
more to follow," and may we not be quite sure that He who has blessed
us now for 40 years, for fifty, sixty, seventy–and I see some who have
numbered 80 years, and you have had God's blessing all the while–then,
has He not, by all these years of favor and mercy, pledged and bound
Himself to bless you even to the end? Assuredly it is so!

III. Now, in the third place, notice HOW THIS POWER WITH GOD CAN BE
EXERCISED BY CHRISTIANS. What shape does power with God take? Of course
it takes the shape of prayer. Christians put forth the power they have
with God when they draw near to Him to ask for blessings upon
themselves and upon others, but it is not every man who prays who has
power with God, or who knows how to use the power which really exists.
Who are the people who really have power with God! I will tell you.

First, this power is exercised by those who are deeply sensible of
their own weakness. No man has power with God who thinks he is strong,
except in the sense in which Paul wrote, "When I am weak, then am I
strong." I have an idea, and I think that Scripture supported it, that
Jacob wrestled very hard with the Angel, but that he never won the
victory till the Angel touched the hollow of his thigh and caused the
sinew to shrink. Then, when Jacob could not any longer stand–as he
fell, he clutched the Angel with all his might as though he would also
pull Him down if he must himself go down–and the weight of Jacob was
all the greater because he could not stand. His very weakness was an
element of his strength and that moment of weakness was the moment of
his victory! Now, if you go to God feeling that you are partly full, He
will not fill you, but will wait till you are quite empty before He
will pour His blessing into you. He will not mix oil with water and,
until He has emptied all the water out of the vessel, He will not begin
to pour in His oil or His wine. When you feel that you have a little
strength for prayer, I think it is very likely that you will not have
power with God. But when it comes to this, that you cry out, "O God, I
can do nothing–all my power is turned to utter weakness! I am driven
to the lowest extremity," then, in the very desperation of your
weakness, you will clutch the promise-making God and, as it were, drag
down the angel and win the blessing, as Jacob did. It is your weakness
that will do it, not your strength!

Have you ever tried to go to God as a fully-sanctified man? I did so
once. I had heard some of the "perfect" brethren, who are travelling to
Heaven by the "high level" railway and I thought I would try their plan
of praying. I went before the Lord as a consecrated and sanctified man.
I knocked at the gate. I had been accustomed to gain admittance the
first time I knocked, but this time I did not. I knocked again and kept
on knocking, though I did not feel quite easy in my conscience about
what I was doing. At last I clamored loudly to be let in and when they
asked me who I was, I replied that I was a perfectly-consecrated and
fully sanctified man–but they said that they did not know me! The fact
was, they had never seen me in that character before. At last, when I
felt that I must get in, and must have a hearing, I knocked again and
when the keeper of the gate asked, "Who is there?" I answered, "I am
Charles Spurgeon, a poor sinner who has no sanctification or perfection
of his own to talk about, but who is trusting alone to Jesus Christ,
the sinners' Savior." The gatekeeper said, "Oh, it is you, is it? Come
in! We know you well enough, we have known you these many years!" And
then I went in directly. I believe that is the best way of praying, and
the way to win the day. It is when you have got on your fine feathers
and top-knots that the Lord will not know you! When you have taken them
all off and gone to Him as you went at the first, then you can say to
Him–

"Once a sinner near despair

Sought your Mercy Seat by prayer.

Mercy heard and set him free,

Lord, that mercy came to me "– "and I am that poor publican who dared
not lift so much as his eyes towards Heaven, but smote upon his breast
and cried, 'God be merciful to me, a sinner,' and he went home to his
house justified rather than the Brother over there who talked so
proudly about the higher life, but who went home without a blessing."
Yes, my Brother, you are strong when you are weak, and you are perfect
when you know that you are imperfect! And you are nearest to Heaven
when you think you are farthest off. The less you esteem yourself, the
higher is God's esteem of you.

Again, in order to have power with God, we must have simple faith.
Nobody who doubts can prevail with God. The promise is not to the
waverer, for James says, "Let not that man think that he shall receive
anything of the Lord," The man who gets the blessing is the one who
fully believes in God's promise and who so believes in it that he acts
upon it. I shall never forget the faith of a certain member of this
Church, who is still living. About 18 or 19 years ago, I was very ill,
indeed. Most people thought that I would die, but, one morning, very
early, this good Brother came down to my house and asked to see my
wife. It was just about daybreak and when she saw him, he said to her,
"I have been all the night wrestling with God for your husband's life.
We cannot afford to lose our Pastor and I feel sure that he is going to
live, so I thought I would just walk here and tell you so," "Thank you,
thank you," said my wife, "I am very grateful for your prayers and for
your faith." It is not everybody who can pray to God like that! And we
fail to obtain the blessings that we seek because we do not pray like
that. But, dear Brothers and Sisters, if we were to believe God just as
we believe our friends–if we were to give God as much trust as we give
to our husbands and our wives–how strong in faith we would be! He
deserves a thousand times more confidence than we can ever repose in
the very best of our relatives or

friends and if we have faith in His promises, we shall certainly
overcome Him! If you trust Him, He cannot fail you. It is possible for
even a good man to fail one who trusts him, but it is quite impossible
for God to fail the soul that has relied upon Him!

I am sure that if we ministers only believe God more and preach more in
faith, He will honor us more. I fancy that if God were to give us
Pentecostal blessings, it would be seen that many of us are by no means
ready to receive them. Suppose there were 5,000 persons converted in
one day here, most of the churches round here would say, "There is a
shocking state of excitement aver at the Tabernacle. It is really
dreadful!" The very "sound" Brethren would feel that we had gone off
into Arminianism, or some other error and I expect that some of you
would say, very dolefully, "Oh, dear! Dear! Dear! Dear! We do hope they
will all stand." The first thought that would be excited in many
Christian minds would be one of suspicion! I am sure that if we
reported that anywhere in England, 3,000 were brought to know the Lord
in one day, there is not one Christian in ten who would believe that
such a thing was possible! And there is not one in a hundred who would
think that it was true! And we ministers would be very much of the same
mind. I was preaching in Bedford, and I prayed that God would bless the
sermon and give me at least some few souls that afternoon. When I had
done, there was an old Wesleyan Brother there who gave me a good
scolding, which I richly deserved. He said to me, "I did not say,
'Amen,' when you were asking for a few souls to be converted, for I
thought you were limiting the Holy One of Israel! Why did you not pray
with all your heart for allof them to be saved. I did," he added, "and
that was why I did not say, 'Amen,' to your narrow prayer." It is often
the case that we preachers do not honor God by believing that He will
give great blessings and, therefore, He does not honor us by giving
those great blessings! But if we maintained a closer adherence to the
Truth of God and had a firmer confidence that God's Word shall never
return unto Him void, He would do far greater things by us than He has
ever yet done!

To this sense of our own weakness and our full belief in God, we must
add earnest attention to His Word. Brother, you cannot expect God to
listen to you if you will not listen to Him. And when you ask of God,
you must not imagine that He will give to you what you ask of Him if
you do not give to Him what he asks of you. If a man loves to sin, his
prayers cannot register with the God of Holiness. When God says to a
man, "Such-and-such a thing is to be done," and the man says, "I will
not do it," the next time he goes to God in prayer, it is very likely
that the Lord will say to Him, "As you did not do as I wished, I shall
not do as you wish." The toleration of any known sin deprives us of
power with God–and the neglect of any known duty prevents a man from
succeeding when he is on his knees. If you would prevail with God, you
must have "a conscience void of offense." You must go before the Lord
confessing your sins and saying, "O Lord, help me to do Your will in
all things! I am perfectly willing to do so and I wish to be Your
loyal, obedient servant in all things." If you do that, you will find
that whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.

In addition to all that I have said, the man who is to prevail with God
must be a man who is terribly in earnest. What an earnest man Jacob was
in that night of wrestling! What a grand utterance that was, "I will
not let You go, except You bless me"! Cold prayers do, as it were, ask
God notto listen to them. When you pray for anything, if you do not
present your petition with earnestness and fervor, you cannot expect
the Lord to hear you. Some people, when they pray, are like the little
boys in the street who give runaway knocks at the door–and off they
go! But the man who prays rightly gets a hold of the knocker on the
Door of Mercy and he knocks, and knocks, and if there is no answer, he
knocks again and again, and if there is not, then, an answer, he knocks
again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and the longer he is
kept waiting, the more loudly he knocks till, at last, you would think
that he was going to carry the house by storm and make the doorposts
jump out of their sockets, he knocks so hard! That is the kind of man
who wins the day with God–the man who will not let the Lord go until
He blesses him! The prayers of John Knox brought down upon Scotland
such copious blessings because they were the prayers of a man whose
heart was all on fire with sacred earnestness, and who prayed with his
whole soul and spirit. Our Lord Jesus, Himself, said, "The Kingdom of
Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force."

To all these qualifications for power with God we must add holy
importunity. Wrestling is not merely laying hold of a man and then
letting him go. I wonder how Jacob did hold that Man who wrestled with
him until the breaking of the day? I guarantee you that he had a tight
grip on Him and I expect that, sometimes, it was especially leg-work,
and then arm-work, and then loin-work, for, when men wrestle in real
earnest, all their sinews, muscles, bones and limbs are

brought into play. So it must have been with Jacob that night, and he
kept on holding the Angel fast, and saying in his soul, if not with his
lips–

"With You all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of
day"–

and, therefore, the blessing was given to him because he kept on
struggling for it! There are some mercies which never will be bestowed
except in answer to continued, importunate prayer. O Brother or Sister,
if you know how to keep on pleading, you are the one who has power with
God! You will be called Israel if you can spend the whole night in
resolute, determined, humble, believing importunity! The blessing must
come if you feel that you cannot do without it, because it is for God's
Glory that it should be bestowed upon you!

And, dear Friends, there is great power with God when, in importunate
prayer, we at last come to tearful entreaty. In Hosea 12: 4, the
Prophet tells us that Jacob "had power over the Angel, and prevailed;
he wept, and made supplication unto Him." Moses does not tell us that
in the Book of Genesis, but Hosea also had the Inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, and he gives us this interesting item concerning Jacob's
wrestling, that, "he wept." I think I see the Patriarch covered with
sweat through his great exertions in wrestling, but, in addition, his
heart is breaking within him and he is sighing and crying all the
while–and the hot tears are falling on the Angel's hands and I think
it was the tears that finally won the victory. You remember that when
our Lord Jesus Christ was in the Garden of Gethsemane, "He offered up
prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that
was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared." And
the man who knows how to weep, if not actually, yet with real spiritual
tears–the man whose soul gets stirred up to a passionate agony of
desire–is the man who has power with God! If we have any such members
in this Church–and I believe that we have many who really do weep over
the souls of sinners–they are the men and women who will bring down
the blessing in answer to their prayers and tears! Brothers and
Sisters, if you are in the habit of weeping over your unconverted
children and, in your pleading with God for their salvation, are in the
habit of weeping unless the blessing comes, you are sure to get the
blessing sooner or later! You are the very strength of the Church! You
are the lifeguards of the Church and God will be sure to give
innumerable blessings in answer to those prayers and tears of yours!
May we have many such Church members, for these are people who have
power with God!

IV. I close by briefly noticing TO WHAT USE THIS POWER MAY BE TURNED.

Whenever this power with God is given, it will bring down many
blessings upon the person who has it and it will also make him the
means of great blessing to others. My time has almost gone, so I will
only dwell on that second point.

Abraham was a man who had power with God, but there was poor Lot living
over in Sodom, just as a great many professed Christians are doing
today. I hope they are God's people, but I cannot make them out. They
like worldly amusements and they like worldly talk–they are like Lot
in Sodom. I wonder how they can endure the foul atmosphere in which
they live? I have often said that the Grace of God can live where I
could not. There are some people with whom I should not like to live,
yet I trust the Grace of God is in them. At least, I hope so, I must
not judge them. But, dear Brethren, if ever that part of the Church
which is like Lot in Sodom gets a blessing, it must be through you who
are like Abraham and have power with God! Pray for your poor
inconsistent Brothers and Sisters–entreat the Lord to prevent them
from going any further into sin. Ask the Lord that they may not be
destroyed with Sodom in the day of His vengeance, and the Lord will
hear you, and bring Lot safely out of Sodom, though it may be that Lot
will have to lose all that he has and lose his wife, too, before he
will get out. You will get him out if you know how to pray for him.

Moses was another man who had power with God. You remember that when
the Israelites made the golden calf, the Lord said to Moses, "Let Me
alone, that My wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume
them: and I will make of you a great nation." Was not that a wonderful
opportunity for Moses? He was to be made into a great nation, and all
the rest of the people were to be destroyed. But you recollect how
Moses pleaded with the Lord and he did not plead is vain. The Lord said
to him, "Let Me alone, that I may consume them," but it seems as though
Moses stood up and grasped God's hand, in which He held His rod of
vengeance, and at last the Lord said that He would pardon the nation
and spare them in answer to the plea of Moses, the man who had power
with God.

And there was Aaron, too, when the plague broke out among the people
who had murmured against him and Moses, and thousands were being struck
dead. At the command of Moses, he took a censer and filled it with
burning coals and incense–and ran into the midst of the congregation
just where the death wave had come–"and he stood between the

dead and the living; and the plague was stayed." Aaron, the high priest
with his censer, had power with God. The Lord Jesus Christ, Aaron's
great Antitype, is continually exercising this power on the behalf of
His people, and He also helps some of His servants to do the same
work–Martin Luther, to wit. How he seemed to stand with the censer of
the Gospel between the living and the dead and, in other dark times and
perilous ages, God has raised up many eminent servants to whom He has
given that same censer of the Gospel which pours forth a sweet savor of
Christ as they also swing it to and fro, standing between the living
and the dead! Oh, that God would give power to many of you, dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, in some such way as this! Recollect the
power that the early Christians had with God to get Peter out of
prison. If you have power with God, it is an engine which you may burn
in all manner of ways for the blessing of your fellow Christians and of
poor outcast sinners. Therefore I charge you to seek it! And when you
get it, hold it fast and walk humbly before God that He may not take
this power from you, but may you be strong in the Lord and in the power
of His might, for Jesus' sake! Amen.