00:00:00.000 - 00:00:54.000

[Music] Mystery, Mystery, What is Your Name? A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. Now let us give attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the book of Genesis. I am reading from the 32nd chapter and I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered 24.

00:00:54.000 - 00:01:19.000

"And Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh and Jacob's thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, 'Let me go, for the morning is breaking.' But Jacob said, 'I will not let you go unless you bless me.'

00:01:19.000 - 00:01:37.000

And he said to him, 'What is your name?' And he said, 'Jacob.' Then he said, 'Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.' Then Jacob asked him, 'Tell me, I pray, your name.'

00:01:37.000 - 00:02:10.000

But he said, 'Why is it that you ask my name?' And there he blessed him." And may God bless to us and to our understanding by the ministry of his spirit this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

00:02:10.000 - 00:02:37.000

She went to the psychologist complaining about the fact that she felt hemmed in, constricted, bound, chained, penned in by the circumstances of her life, and she felt it especially each time she did the dishes. So he visited her in her home, and he discovered that over her sink there was no window, just a wooden wall.

00:02:37.000 - 00:02:59.000

So his first suggestion to her was that she put a window there, so that while she was washing the dishes she could look out and see the ground squirrels and the flowers and the trees and enjoy the beauties of the world. "People are helped," the psychologist said, "by looking at God's great outdoors."

00:02:59.000 - 00:03:21.000

And she did what he suggested, and it was a help. And let's acknowledge that that is true. Spending an afternoon in the garden, sinking your hands in the soil, going for a ride in the mountains, seeing the beauties of God's world can do a lot to free a chained spirit.

00:03:21.000 - 00:03:50.000

But there are a lot of people in life who are so trapped, so confined, so bound, so chained, so imprisoned, that no view of God's world is going to solve their difficulty. They don't need to see God's world. They need to see God. They need to have the center of them somehow reach the center of him.

00:03:50.000 - 00:04:13.000

Their souls, their essence, the you that is at the middle of you. That in you which will be left after you die because God preserves it. That sacred center. When that center meets the center of God, you and him together, in that union,

00:04:13.000 - 00:04:34.000

there is a freeing experience that cannot be found in any other way. Of course, it is not easy to reach God center to center. It's very much like standing at the edge of a vast ocean. And you look out over the ocean, and you cannot see the other side,

00:04:34.000 - 00:04:52.000

and you cannot see how far it goes to either side. Now, God is like that, so great, so vast, that we are not able from any vantage point to survey all of God. But more than that, you may decide that you wish to know the ocean more intimately,

00:04:52.000 - 00:05:14.000

and so you begin to wade out into the water, first to your ankles, then your knees, then your waist, then your neck. Now, you discover things about the ocean in that way that you would not know by standing on the shore, but each step that you take into the water, your view of the horizon is narrowed.

00:05:14.000 - 00:05:30.000

When you get to the place where the water is to your chin, you cannot see nearly as much of the water as you could see before. Now you can only see the heads of the waves that are all about you. And if you submerge yourself, if you go into the ocean so that you go under its surface,

00:05:30.000 - 00:05:51.000

then you can see nothing at all except for that little bit of ocean in which you find yourself. And communion with God is like that. For when you begin to immerse yourself in God, when you begin to step into him and some point of your experience,

00:05:51.000 - 00:06:06.000

you become caught up in that moment, so that the awe and the greatness and the grandeur of it leads you not to be able to grasp at all the things you might have been able to see as long as you stood on the shore.

00:06:06.000 - 00:06:22.000

This is what has led the great mystics of the faith to say that as you come closer to the center of God, you move more and more into a cloud of unknowing. You cry out, "Mystery, mystery, what is your name?

00:06:22.000 - 00:06:43.000

There is too much of you for me to know." And the closer I get to you, the more amazed and astonished I am by you, so that even in that closeness, I must affirm that you are lost from me in the darkest incomprehensibility.

00:06:43.000 - 00:06:59.000

It's hard to meet God center to center. That's what Jacob discovered. Now it has been said of us that we're a very busy people, so busy in fact that we'd like to go through every panel on a revolving door.

00:06:59.000 - 00:07:12.000

But I would suggest that there is in all of us at least some hunger for the highest. Our late-night broadcast on Sundays is sometimes cut off because of hockey games or baseball games.

00:07:12.000 - 00:07:25.000

And whenever that happens, we get some rather irritated calls. And I remember one Monday morning last winter when I got a call from a man. His voice sounded rather young. He said, "We don't need hockey games. What we need is to hear about God.

00:07:25.000 - 00:07:42.000

We need to know why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing while we're here, and we just need to know more about him or about her, whatever the case may be." I think he was expressing an honest word. He was hungering for the highest.

00:07:42.000 - 00:07:58.000

He wanted to be in touch at the center. Now that's what we see in Jacob. He is sleeping one night by the Jabbok River, and in the midst of his sleep he is attacked by some person he cannot identify.

00:07:58.000 - 00:08:14.000

No name is given. Now he wrestles with this person, and for a while he thinks he's holding his own, and then he discovers that this person reaches down and simply touches him on the thigh, and that touch is enough to cripple him.

00:08:14.000 - 00:08:32.000

He realizes that he is not wrestling with any mere mortal. No mere mortal can touch you and with a mere touch cripple you. So Jacob hangs on, and this being with whom he wrestles, who is in fact God, allows Jacob to hang on.

00:08:32.000 - 00:08:45.000

Jacob says, "Tell me, I pray you, your name." Now you see, in the Old Testament it was understood that when you knew a person's name, to that degree you had a certain amount of power over them.

00:08:45.000 - 00:08:57.000

You remember how in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were given the responsibility of naming all of the animals. That indicated that they were to be superior above the animals. And you understand in your own life,

00:08:57.000 - 00:09:10.000

it's much easier to deal with people if you know their name. If you're in the midst of an argument, it's much easier to say, "Now, John," than it is to say, "Now, hey, you," whatever your name is, "listen to this point of view."

00:09:10.000 - 00:09:31.000

When you know a name, there is a certain amount of control that comes with it. So Jacob says to this one with whom he wrestles, "Tell me your name." And God responds, "Why is it that you ask my name? You can't grasp my name.

00:09:31.000 - 00:09:45.000

You can't comprehend my being. There's no way you can wrap your little mind about my largeness. Why is it that you ask my name? I am glad that there is in you a hunger for the highest,

00:09:45.000 - 00:09:59.000

but I must remain finally for you mystery. Still, I will bless you." And God blesses Jacob there. Now, I hear some of you say,

00:09:59.000 - 00:10:09.000

"Well, the names of God are given in the Bible." No, they're not. Titles for God are given in the Bible. He's called Elohim. That refers to his being the ruler of nature.

00:10:09.000 - 00:10:21.000

He's called Yahweh. That refers to his being the Lord God of Israel. He is described as the Holy One. That has reference to his universal deity. Jesus tells us to call God Father.

00:10:21.000 - 00:10:32.000

In fact, he uses a very intimate phrase. We are to call God Daddy. And God himself, when he came to earth and dwelt among us in flesh, had himself called Jesus.

00:10:32.000 - 00:10:51.000

But all of these names are titles or descriptions. None of these things are the actual name of God. That name nowhere appears on the pages of Scripture. On one occasion, Moses said to God, "Tell me your name."

00:10:51.000 - 00:11:12.000

And God responds, "I am who I am." Now, why is it that we cannot know the name of God, the fullness of God? Well, the first reason, obviously, is God is too great for us to grasp. We're like little moths that fly about the flame of God,

00:11:12.000 - 00:11:25.000

and the closer we get to him, well, finally we get burned up, incinerated in the midst of his glory. I watched a new housing project going in in California, and first they put in the high-tension lines,

00:11:25.000 - 00:11:37.000

and then they built a solid red-brick building, and they brought the high-tension lines down into that building, and out of that building came a lot of smaller lines, and they went off to the new houses that were being built.

00:11:37.000 - 00:11:48.000

And I asked an electrical engineer what this was, and he said, "Well, all the power of these lines is brought down to this building, "and there it's reduced by transformers "so that it can be sent out in smaller amounts

00:11:48.000 - 00:12:01.000

"to the homes that need to use that electric power." I said, "What would happen if all of the power from one of those lines "went directly into one of those homes?" He said, "It would be instantaneously destroyed.

00:12:01.000 - 00:12:18.000

"It would be immediately engulfed in an electrical storm "which would utterly annihilate it." For us, you see, to come into the presence of the magnificence of God would be to be instantly annihilated.

00:12:18.000 - 00:12:34.000

That's the reason the Scriptures say in four different places, "No man can see God and live." Or we read in Timothy, "God dwells in unapproachable light." Or again, it says in three places in the New Testament,

00:12:34.000 - 00:12:49.000

"No man may look upon God and live." Now, there are figurative experiences told up in the Bible where people see God, but they don't actually see God. There is no face-to-face confrontation,

00:12:49.000 - 00:13:05.000

and their knowledge is not magnificently expanded so that they can comprehend all of God. The fact of the matter is when you come into the presence of God, what you see is so amazing that all you can describe it as

00:13:05.000 - 00:13:23.000

is a cloud of unknowing. But there's another reason why we cannot know God's name, know his fullness, and that is that our misconceptions and our delusions mislead us in trying to understand him.

00:13:23.000 - 00:13:29.000

See, we all have our own ideas about God. We got them in Sunday school. We got them from our parents. We got them from our pastors.

00:13:29.000 - 00:13:46.000

We got them from books we've read and courses we've taken. And these presuppositions limit our understanding of God, so much so that we often try to cut down God so that he fits our viewpoint. And if you start out with false presuppositions,

00:13:46.000 - 00:14:00.000

you are inevitably going to arrive at false conclusions. You can't put God in a box. There used to be a famous German clown by the name of Carl Valentine, and one of his fits was to have the curtain go up on a stage,

00:14:00.000 - 00:14:16.000

and the stage was all dark except for one spot of light, one floodlight. And he was on his knees looking around in that spot of light. And a policeman enters, and the policeman says, "Have you lost something?" And he says, "Yes, I have lost the key to my house."

00:14:16.000 - 00:14:29.000

And the policeman said, "Well, I'll help you look for it." And he gets down, and the two of them are feeling around in this circle of light. They don't find anything. Finally, the policeman says, "Are you sure you lost the key here?"

00:14:29.000 - 00:14:42.000

And Valentine says, "No, I didn't lose it here. I lost it over there," pointing to a dark corner of the stage. And the policeman said, "Well, if you lost it over there, then why are you looking for it over here?"

00:14:42.000 - 00:15:00.000

And Valentine immediately responds, "Because there's more light over here." You see, that's what happens to us. We get a little light in our theology, or we get a little light in our Bible study, or we get a little light in our religious experience,

00:15:00.000 - 00:15:19.000

and then we try to find God as he is in that little light just because there's more light over here. And all the while, in his immensity and greatness, he stands apart in the darkness.

00:15:19.000 - 00:15:37.000

This is the reason that many people have no real personal experience of God. "Well, Bruce, I hear someone say, 'You've said two contradictory things. You say it's good for us to have the center of us meet the center of God, and that's tremendously freeing, but having said that,

00:15:37.000 - 00:15:50.000

you then go on to say that none of us can even know God's name and that we cannot grasp the fullness of his glory just because of his magnificence and also because of our own prejudices and limitations.

00:15:50.000 - 00:16:05.000

What then are we to do?" I answer, "Well, first of all, we are to love God. There are a lot of people you know who worship God, but who do not love God.

00:16:05.000 - 00:16:17.000

Yet the Scriptures say that we are to love him with our heart, our mind, our soul, and our body. We are to love him to the uttermost." Now, love is, at the level in which I'm describing it,

00:16:17.000 - 00:16:32.000

almost inevitably the result of gratitude. In other words, when you recognize what God has done for you, a sense of gratitude wells up within you, and you love God for what he has done for you.

00:16:32.000 - 00:16:43.000

And there's nothing wrong with that, but that's the least significant kind of love, because that kind of love, you see, is more rooted in the self than it is in God.

00:16:43.000 - 00:16:59.000

You're not loving God for what God is. You're loving God for what God has done for you. So we begin by loving God, but we must move beyond that to admiring God.

00:16:59.000 - 00:17:13.000

Now, to admire God means to regard him with wonder and esteem and with pleasure and delight. You've gone to meetings, and so do I, where they sing praises to God in hymns,

00:17:13.000 - 00:17:23.000

and people get up and testify to the greatness of God in their lives, and they talk about the prayers that they have prayed and the prayers that they have had answered. And those are very beautiful times.

00:17:23.000 - 00:17:38.000

Those are good times. Those are biblically enjoined times. But you can do all of those things without admiring God. You see, if you're so wrapped up in yourself and in your own experiences of God,

00:17:38.000 - 00:17:52.000

you're not thinking about him, and to admire God is to be thinking of him for himself. This is what orthodoxy is. You know, it's a strange thing that many people today

00:17:52.000 - 00:18:05.000

think the word orthodoxy means right-believing. We had a group of Presbyterians break off of the Presbyterian Church and form what they call the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the right-believing Presbyterian Church.

00:18:05.000 - 00:18:19.000

We believe in the right way. Orthodoxy does not mean right-believing. Ortho means straight. Doxa means praise or glory. Orthodoxy does not right-believing. It means right-praising.

00:18:19.000 - 00:18:36.000

And it would be a wonderful thing in the Church if we would stop arguing about God, debating our theologies, and instead focus on admiring him, praising him.

00:18:36.000 - 00:18:51.000

But you see, beyond love and admiration comes wonder. We must wonder at God. Now, when you're dealing with wonder, you're dealing with that which is beyond reason.

00:18:51.000 - 00:19:06.000

You are now in the realm of astonishment. It says that when Abraham and when Moses and when Paul and when John saw Jesus or saw the vision of God, they fell on their faces.

00:19:06.000 - 00:19:15.000

Now, I am not saying that we are to be going about falling on our faces because in this age we do not have those kinds of visions, but I am saying that in our contemplation,

00:19:15.000 - 00:19:30.000

our hearts should be, to mix the metaphor, falling on their faces in awe before God. When I read the biographies of the great Christian saints, this is what I find, wonder before God.

00:19:30.000 - 00:19:43.000

And I think this is what inspires the great poetry of our noblest hymns. Back in 1874, a French ship, the Ville de Havre, set sail from France to the United States,

00:19:43.000 - 00:19:59.000

and on board was Mrs. H.G. Spafford and her four children. The ship ran into another ship in the middle of the sea, and the Ville de Havre sank in 30 minutes. Before it went under, Mrs. Spafford got her four little ones together.

00:19:59.000 - 00:20:14.000

She got them all into life vests. She got them all onto a lifeboat. She had prayer with them, committed them to God, and then, remaining on the ship herself, ready to lose her life,

00:20:14.000 - 00:20:30.000

she kissed her children, and their lifeboat pulled away. But by a strange series of events, that lifeboat sank, and all four of the children were lost. While Mrs. Spafford, who stayed on board the vessel,

00:20:30.000 - 00:20:48.000

expecting to lose her life, she in fact was saved. She sent a telegram back to her husband in Chicago, two words, "Saved alone." He rushed immediately to her side, and when he got there,

00:20:48.000 - 00:21:07.000

he found on her face a magnificent smile, a beautiful countenance. He wrote that she was so caught up in thinking about God, so lost in the wonder of His grace,

00:21:07.000 - 00:21:28.000

so sublimely captured by the incredible beauty of God, that there appeared to be in her no hurt at all. Sitting down, he wrote a hymn about what he saw. You remember it.

00:21:28.000 - 00:21:50.000

"When peace like a river attendeth my way, or sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever, my Lord, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

00:21:50.000 - 00:22:11.000

When you're caught up in the wonder of God, it is well with your soul." Yet there is one thing more. For beyond wonder, there is the adoration of God.

00:22:11.000 - 00:22:27.000

The adoration of God is to be enraptured by Him. It is to be set aglow by Him. It is to be in great awe because you are so close to your friend. It is also to be in great fear

00:22:27.000 - 00:22:42.000

because in that closeness you learn that He is the enemy of evil. This is the deepest kind of union. And that's the reason when the Bible speaks of it, it speaks of it in sexual terms.

00:22:42.000 - 00:23:00.000

The most intimate, ecstatic, perfect, blissful union that two people can know is the union of the sexual embrace. And that is why in the book of the Song of Solomon, the union of God with the soul,

00:23:00.000 - 00:23:27.000

when the center of God meets the center of one of His children, it's described in sexual terms. These waters are too deep for some of you to swim in. But be patient and seek to understand.

00:23:27.000 - 00:23:52.000

The sexual union is not just a biological unity. It is a unity of wholeness when heart meets heart. Paul says in Ephesians that the consummation for the Christian comes when Christ the groom unites with the Church his bride,

00:23:52.000 - 00:24:13.000

when they possess each other, when they long for each other. Our fathers picked this up and talked of union with God in sexual terms most of the time. To adore God is to be embraced by Him,

00:24:13.000 - 00:24:52.000

to be ravished by His love, to be held fast by His passion. It is to be penetrated by His grace and His glory. It is such a climax of devotion that it intoxicates the spirit.

00:24:52.000 - 00:25:10.000

It is a sweet madness. It is a holy fragrance. It is that of which Paul speaks when he says, "Then we can comprehend with the saints the length, the breadth, the height,

00:25:10.000 - 00:25:36.000

the depth of the love of God, and we are filled with the fullness of Him." That's what it is to know God. So we come together to worship, and we're good-humored, and we sing nice hymns,

00:25:36.000 - 00:25:50.000

and we study God's Word as best in our crippled way we are able, and we teach. But how much rapture is there? How much of the fire of that kind of love?

00:25:50.000 - 00:26:01.000

Are we being freed? Are we being unchained? Because we adore Him here. Do any of us go home like Jacob? He never saw the face of God.

00:26:01.000 - 00:26:25.000

When the dawn came, he saw little of it, a vast, strong face, one half ruined with suffering and one half fierce with love. And he cries out, "Mystery, mystery, what is your name?" And he gets no answer but a crushing embrace that leaves him crippled

00:26:25.000 - 00:26:46.000

so that he limps away against the conflagration of the dawn, defeated, ravished by God. And so, most blessed. And I stand on my little promontory here,

00:26:46.000 - 00:27:04.000

and I call out to you who sail your ships on deep and wide seas. Be grateful to God. Love God. Admire God.

00:27:04.000 - 00:27:18.000

Wonder at God. Adore God. Lose yourself in God. Not that you will ever know his name,

00:27:18.000 - 00:27:51.000

and not that you will ever understand him, but that you will come to that moment when you discover that he knows your name. And in that moment, your soul will be sweetly satisfied.

00:27:51.000 - 00:28:25.000

Let us pray. Oh God, bless this simple witness in your name. To the helping of all those who would meet thee, heart to heart. For Jesus' sake, amen.

00:28:26.000 - 00:29:15.860

[Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]