Jacob’s Substitutes For Prayer
R. L. Wyser

Genesis 32:1-11

Sin casts a long shadow longer than the sinner every imagines at the time he sins.  It was twenty years, almost a whole generation as men count time, since Jacob had fled the land of Canaan after deceiving his father and defrauding his brother, Esau.  At Bethel, on the way down to Mesopotamia, he had had the wonderful vision of a ladder let down from Heaven and the angels of God ascending and descending.  But since then, Jacob had not seen much of the angels.  He had, however, found a human angel, the lovely daughter of Laban, drawing water for her flocks at the well, immediately winning all of the affection and devotion in Jacob’s heart.  For fourteen years he had toiled for her hand, and all of these years her smile had been the star of his hope.  Now, after twenty years, Jacob was on his way back to his father’s country, a Jacob quite different from the solitary fugitive who had fled from his father’s encampment with nothing but his staff in his hands.  Now he was a prosperous man.  He had wrestled with Laban and had won.  He had wrestled with the world and fortune and had come off victorious.  With numerous flocks and herds, and his wives and children, and followers, Jacob was on his way back to Canaan.  He was about to wrestle with an angel.  He was uneasy and unhappy.  You will remember that Jacob had just got free from Laban, his father-in-law, and was on the way to his promised home.  On this trip, he must go through the land of Seir in the country of Edom.  This presented a tremendous problem for Jacob because in the land of Seir lived his brother, Esau.  It would not be possible for Jacob to go out of the way and so Esau must be paid a visit.  He was an older brother, he was an only brother, he was a twin brother, and most of all he was an offended brother.  Jacob was afraid.  The problems that besought him were overwhelming.  He did not know the attitude that Esau would take.  He could only imagine that Esau’s anger was kindled to fever pitch and that his life would be in danger as he came near to his brother.  “How will I win Esau over to my side?” he must have thought.  “How will I reconcile him to me?” 
 
In the story, Jacob concocts a best variety of maneuvers recorded in the Old Testament.  He was a man of God.  He could have gone to God in prayer.  He knew God.  He knew how to pray.  He should have prayed.  He had seen what God would do in answer to prayer.  Yet, like so many of us in the face of our problems and difficulties, he turned to prayer only as a last resort.  What a typical picture he is of us and our churches in preparing for revivals, in preparing for evangelism, in preparing to win people for the Lord and grow churches for the Lord.  We do everything but the main thing.  We need to learn by the lessons of Jacob’s mistakes.

Jacob Attempts To Substitute Knowledge For Prayer

Notice verse one of Genesis 32, “And Jacob went on his way.”  There is no mention of God, no mention of consulting the Almighty, no mention of turning to Him who has the answer to all.  He simply went on his way.  He could handle this one by himself.  Jacob was one of the shrewdest men who ever lived and he devised a plan on his own by which to solve his problem.  His plan, of course, failed because it was his and not God’s.  What a pity Jacob went on his way, depending on his knowledge, substituting wisdom for prayer.  

It is wonderful to be wise.  It is important to be educated.  It is a tremendous asset to have knowledge.  But knowledge is no substitute for prayer.  We live in the most enlightened age in history.  Never have men been as educated as they are today.  We have learned as much in the last twenty years as we have in the last two hundred years, and in the last one hundred years, as much as we have in the entire history of the world.  This is indeed, an intellectual age.  We bow at the shrine of intelligence.  We worship at the goddess of wisdom.  We marvel and wonder at the men with high-sounding degrees and long lists of scholastic qualifications. 
 
As Jacob, so many of us substitute knowledge for prayer.  We have never been more enlightened and less powerless.  We have never known more and done less.  We have never had more education and less evangelism than we have today.  We know about God but we do not know God, and there is a difference. The only way to know someone is to spend time with them.  There is no substitute for time in prayer.  To be sure, the Bible says that we are not heard for our much speaking and this is the excuse that most of us use for not praying.  The Bible says that the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.  I have found that men who are great men of God, who have great power with God, are men who spend great time in prayer.  The apostle Paul prayed, “Oh, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.”  Notice, he does not say know about him, but literally know him.  This is the same Greek word Mary used when discovering she was with child of the Holy Ghost.  She cried, “How shall this be seeing I know not a man?”  The word know means to be in oneness with, in union with.  In other words, Paul was saying that in the same way a man knows his wife, the twain become one, men can know God.  We can be one with Him.  We can have His power, His attributes, and His assets.  Did not our Lord, Himself, say, “Greater works than these shall ye do because I go unto my Father?”  The only way to have power with God is to spend time with God.  It is not enough to be intellectual, to have a great education and mighty learning.  To know about God will not suffice.  You must know God to depend on Him.  You must take time in prayer to be a mighty man of God. 
 
Jacob made the same substitution that most of us do.  He went on his way depending on himself.  He could handle this one.  He could pull this one out of the hat.  Surely he would figure out something.  He was depending on Jacob instead of depending on God.  He tried to substitute knowledge for prayer.

Jacob Makes A Typical Mistake He Tries To Substitute Numbers For Prayer

Notice verse three, “And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau.”  I raise the question, “Why messengers?  Why not a messenger?”  One would have done.  How many men does it take to carry a letter?   Did four men, or fourteen, or forty, have to deliver the message that Jacob wanted to ensue for peace?  Not at all.  Jacob wanted to bowl over his brother with his numerical prowess.  He must have thought, “Surely my brother will just give up.  He will be so impressed with my mighty numbers that he will come ensue for peace.  Jacob tried to substitute numbers for prayer. 
 
It is good to build great churches.  It is wonderful to set Sunday school records.  It is exciting to watch churches grow, baptizing great numbers of converts.  But quantity will never substitute for quality.  Our great numbers will never impress the world.  Someone has said that Pentecostals are many but they are not much.  I wonder if one-third of us could not do more for God in this country if we prayed more and thought less about numbers.  Now, numbers are good; they represent people.  But they are certainly no substitute for prayer.

Jacob Tries To Substitute Wealth For Prayer

Notice verse five, “And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and men servants and women servants, and I have sent to tell my lord that I may find grace in thy sight.”  Now, get the plan.  Jacob says, “You go and tell my brother, Esau, how rich I am.  Tell him of my possessions and he will be impressed.  He will give up.”  Esau was not impressed.  Long ago I learned that when you combat the world with the world’s methods you will lose every time.  Thank God that we have something that the world does not have in the power of God, which comes in answer to prayer.

Verse six says, “We came to thy brother, Esau, and also he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him.”  When Jacob’s men took the message of might and wealth, they returned saying, “He is mightier and richer than we are.”  It is always that way with the world.  They can out-finance us, out-show us, and out-produce us.  However, the one thing they cannot do is out-pray us.  In God, and only in God, do we have a reservoir of power, a reserve of strength, a citadel of might, with which the world cannot do battle.

Jacob Substitutes Organization For Prayer

Notice verse four, “And he commanded them saying, ‘Thus shall ye speak.’”  Ah, at last we’ve arrived!  The millennium is here.  We are finally organized and have hit on a plan.  How good to be organized.  How good to have a plan.  But how bad to substitute it for prayer.  Here is Jacob’s plan: He will divide into two bands, sending one one way and one the other.  If Esau comes to the company and smite it, then the other company, which is left, shall escape.  At last, Jacob had organized. 
 
We are the best-organized movement in the history of the world, I believe.  We have more divisions, and boards, and departments, and committees, more foundations than Carter has little liver pills.  Yet, we have never been more impotent.  Organization is no substitute for prayer.  I feel sometimes that we have nearly organized the spirit right out of our religion.  The ancient church had a minimum of organization but it had a maximum of power.  The average church today has a maximum of organization, but tragically lacks powers.  Dr. G. Campbell Morgan once warned, “One of Satan’s methods today is to start so many organizations in a church that the members have no time for unhurried communion with God.”  Many Christians are so busy that they can hear only the clink and clatter of church machinery.  Too often, we are over-organized and under-agonized.  The church has many organizers, but few agonizers.  Many who pay, but few who pray.  Many resters, but few wrestlers.  Many who are enterprising, but few who are interceding.  A worldly Christian will stop praying, and a praying Christian will stop worldliness.  Tithes may build a church building, but prayer will give it life.  That is the difference between the modern church and the early church.  In the matter of effective prayer, never have so many left so much to so few.  We need to pray.  “The one concern of the devil,” Samuel Chadwick said, “is to keep Christians from praying.  He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion.  He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.”  Martin Luther said, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”  I do believe that a day without prayer is indeed a boast against God.
  
Finally Thank God Jacob Turns To Prayer

We noticed in Genesis 32:9-11, “And Jacob said, Oh God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidest unto me, Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee, I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all of the truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant, for with my staff I passed over this Jordan and now I am become two bands.  Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me and the mother with the children.”  Jacob had tried organizations, and plans, and wisdom, and money, and messengers, everything but God.  Now failing as Esau comes closer and closer, Jacob turns to prayer and begs for deliverance.  What will the answer be?  Will Esau respond?  We he come to Jacob with peace?
  
Jacob tried everything but the right thing.  Now he has tried that.  Watch as God bends down His ear from Heaven, moves all of the power of the universe, and enters the heart of the offended brother to warm his heart towards Jacob.  Verse four of chapter thirty-three says, “And Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.”  By the time Esau got to Jacob, God had so touched his heart that he had forgotten what he was even angry about.  Esau fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept.  What a beautiful and happy ending!  What an important story for the church today.

Today we pray five minutes and preach two weeks, and nothing happens.  How well we need to remember that at Pentecost they prayed ten days, preached five minutes, and three thousand souls were saved.
  
Demosthenes said that, “Knowledge begins with definition.”  

We live. What is life?  We sleep.  What is sleep?  We rest.  What is rest?  We work.  What is work?  We use electricity.  What is electricity?  We have light.  What is light?  We know that darkness comes and goes at certain times.  What is darkness?  We hear the sound of the wind.  What is wind?  We listen to music.  What is music?  We love eloquence.  What is eloquence?  We know that the laws of gravitation function.  What is gravitation?  Men die.  What is death?  Men and women love.  What is love?  We pray.  Jesus prayed.  What is prayer?

Some people think of prayer as just asking God for something.  Some people think of prayer as arguing with God in their behalf.  Some people think of prayer as a first aid kit for times of trouble.  Some people think of prayer as foisting their opinion and judgment on God.  Some people think of prayer as a debate with God, as a matter of arguing with God and getting God to do for them what God does not want to do.  Some people think of prayer as begging God for something on the basis of personal merit or goodness.  

Prayer is the preface to the Book of Christian Living, the text of the New Life Sermon, the girding on of the armor for battle, the Pilgrim’s preparation for his journey and it must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.  Prayer is a sin-killer, a power-bringer, a victory-giver, a holiness-promoter, a dispute adjustor, an obstacle remove, and a Christ revealer. 
 
Prayer Is An Invitation To God 
 
In prayer, we invite God to the midst of our needs, asking him to employ his powers and the alleviation of our distresses.  Prayer is like opening the door to the doctor and turning the sick one over to his care with a willingness to do what the physician asks.  Prayer is the appointed condition of getting God’s aid.  This aid is as manifold and illimitable as God’s ability and as varied and exhaustless is this aid as man’s needs.  Prayer is the avenue through which God supplies man’s wants.  Prayer fills man’s emptiness with God’s fullness.  Prayer fills man’s poverty with God’s riches.  Prayer puts away man’s weakness with the coming of God’s strength.  It banishes man’s littleness with God’s greatness.  Prayer is God’s plan to supply man’s great and continuous need with God’s great and continuous abundance. 

Prayer Is Work  
 
Prayer takes a great deal out of the one who prays.  Work done by the rushing torrent of human will not be much, whereas work done in vital and unbroken contact with the Living God will tell for all eternity.  We cannot do God’s work without prayer. 

Some years ago, a young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job.  “That depends,” replied the foreman, “Let’s see you fell this tree.”  The young man stepped forward and skillfully felled the great tree.  Impressed, the foreman exclaimed, “Start Monday.”  

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by, and Thursday afternoon, the foreman approached the man and said, “You can pick up your paycheck on the way out today.”  

Startled, he replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.”  

“Normally we do, “answered the foreman, “But we are letting you go today, because you have fallen behind.  Our daily felling chart shows that you have dropped from first place on Monday to last on Wednesday.”  

“But I am a hard worker,” the young man objected, “I arrive first and leave last, and even have worked through my coffee breaks.”  

The foreman sensing the boy’s integrity thought for a moment, and then asked, “Have you been sharpening your ax?”

The young man replied, “I have been working too hard to take the time.”
  
How about you?  Have you been too busy, too hard at work to sharpen your ax?   Prayer is the hone that gives you that sharp edge.  Without it, the more work you do, the duller you get. 

R. A. Torrey lamented the average believer’s indifference to prayer by writing, “How little time the average Christian spends in prayer.”  We are too busy to pray and so we are too busy to have power.  We have a great deal of activity but we accomplish little.  The power of God is lacking in our lives and in our work.  We have not because we ask not.  

Many people have little heart for prayer because they have never spent enough time in fellowship with God, with His word and in seeking His will in prayer to ever get use to it.  They are strangers to spiritual things and that is why prayer is so tough for them.  They are like the eight-year-old child of a psychology professor who, when asked why he never did his homework, “I have adjusted myself to inferior grades.”  So many have adjusted themselves to inferior things. 
	
Prayer is God’s business to which men can attend.  Prayer is God’s necessary business, which men only can do and that men must do.  Prayer is the chief agency and activity whereby men align themselves with God’s purpose.  Prayer does not consists in battering the walls of heaven for personal benefits or the success of our plans, rather it is the committing of ourselves for the carrying out of his purposes.  It is the telephone call to headquarters for orders.  It is not bending God’s will to ours, but our will to God’s. 

In prayer we tap vast reservoirs of spiritual power whereby God can find fuller entrance into the hearts of men.  We often speak of intercessory work as being of vital importance.  I want to prove this is actual fact by giving my best and my first energies to it as God may lead.   I feel like a businessman who sees an inexhaustible supply and almost unlimited demand.  The demand is the lost state of those tens of thousands, their ignorance, their superstition, their sinfulness, the need of their body, their minds, or souls.  The supply is the grace of God to meet this need which will be brought down to them by a persevering prayer of a considerable company of God’s people.  All I want to do is to bring the supply and the demand together. 

Charles Spurgeon said that “We cannot all argue, but we can all pray.  We cannot all be leaders, but we can all be pleaders.  We cannot all be mighty in rhetoric, but we can all be prevalent in prayer.  I would sooner see you eloquent with God than with men.”  

Prayer Is A Battle  
  
In prayer as in no other way, we come in contact with the powers of darkness.  Satan despises prayer.  Satan battles for rulership of Christian souls.  He does all he can to keep us from praying.  When we pray, we are fighting against the rulers of darkness.  Satan has suffered so much by good praying that all his wily, shrewd and ensnaring devices will be used to cripple his performance.
  
Every believer in Christ is involved in spiritual warfare every day.  We cannot afford, therefore, to enter the day complacently.
  
In an article for the San Francisco Chronicle someone wrote, “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.  It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up.  It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.  It doesn’t matter where you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up you had better be running." 

Every day is a spiritual battle.  There is a roaring lion.  We have to fight or lose out.
  
The large sanctuary was packed with ministers who had come a long distance to hear the great old minister speak.  He was the announced speaker of the hour.  Having had so much success in the ministry, they knew that he would have something vital to say.  As he stepped behind the pulpit, an intense silence spread over the audience.  The ministers leaned forward in their seats to hear what the master of the modern sermon would have for them.  But as he stood there, his snow-white hair framing his rugged character-filled face, he said nothing for a full five minutes.  The silence and tension increased until it was almost unbearable, and then the old minister leaned across the pulpit, and with a near sob in his voice said, “Brethren, have you learned to pray.”  That was his entire sermon, just six words.  But those who heard it went away saying it was the greatest sermon they had ever heard.
 
A missionary who started a girls’ school in Kenya was faced with an almost insurmountable difficulty:  Lack of money, lack of interest, lack of help, lack of understanding, and lack of complete acceptance by the leaders of the church in Kenya.  Some of the elders wondered if it was even scriptural to educate women.  During those difficult days, the girls’ school was always mentioned at the family altar, but “Generally, the daughter said, “after we all had prayed, my mother would say, ‘Now, Lord, we continue a little longer,’ and then she would mention another series of petitions.”

I believe that praying a little longer is the great need of today.  Pray a little longer, battle the force of darkness. 

Prayer Is Power   

Prayer is the greatest power we have on earth.  What a pity this power is often the least used, but when we pray, we link ourselves with the inexhaustible power that spins the universe.  What folly that the deepest source of power and perfection have been miserably undeveloped.   Standing at the South Pole is like being in the eye of a hurricane.  It is deceivingly calm.  The quietness seems inconsistent with the fact that mighty winds originate there.  How is this possible?  As warm air from the equator flows in over the polar region, it descends, becomes cold and dense and sinks to the frigid surface.  Since the ice-covered plateau tapers off towards the ocean and no mountains or other obstacles stand in the way, gravity pulls the heavy cold air down the smooth slopes, the wind picks up tremendous speed as it moves northward toward the equator.  Gradually it is heated by the sun and begins to rise, creating a circular pattern to drive the earth’s weather machine that is so vital to our existence.  For Christians, quiet times of prayer and worship also give rise to great power.  They might seem nonproductive because nothing appears to be happening.  Our urge is almost compulsive: Move, do, work, worry, struggle.  Yet at the heart of accomplishing things for God must be that regular experience of calm, followed by an unobstructed flow of energy.   

An automobile has a battery which is simply stored up energy that enables the machine to function; the motor, lights, radio and so on draw energy out of the battery.   However, an automobile also has a generator that replaces the energy drawn from the battery.  If the generator does not function properly, the battery will soon be dead.  Then when you need power to start the automobile, you will find that you have none.  Nothing is wrong with the rest of the mechanical equipment.  It simply has no power by which to function.  An automobile has a cable connecting the battery to the car’s mechanism.  If that cable is removed, the battery still has some power to spare.  However, the power is not transmitted to the working parts of the automobile, so the car itself is powerless.
 
Christians are like that.  We expend spiritual energy and ministry.  For use to remain spiritually strong, that energy needs to be replenished.  If not, then in a crisis moment, we will discover the power is gone.  On the one hand, Jesus said that prayer is the generator that keeps our spiritual power constant, but on the other hand, prayer is the cable that connects us to the omnipotence of God.
  
Chrysostom, in talking about prayer, said, “The potency of prayer has subdued the strength of fire.  It hath bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frogs, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt.  Prayer is an all-sufficient panoply; a treasure undiminished, a mine, which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm.  It is the root, the fountain, and the mother of a thousand blessings.  There can be no substitute, no rival for prayer.  It stands alone as the greatest spiritual force, and this force must be eminent and acting.  It cannot be dispensed with during one generation, or held in abeyance for the advance for any great movement.  It must be continuous, in particular, always, everywhere, and in everything.  We cannot run our spiritual operations on the prayers of the past generation.   Many persons believe in the efficacy of prayer, but not many pray.  Prayer is the easiest and the hardest of all things, the simplest and the sublimest, the weakest and the most powerful.  Its results lie outside the range of human possibilities.  They are limited only by the omnipotence of God.  Few Christians have anything but a vague idea of the power of prayer.  Fewer still have any experience of that power.  The church seems almost wholly unaware of the power that God puts her into her hands, this spiritual carte blanche on the infinite resources of God’s wisdom and power is rarely if ever used, never used to the full measure of honoring God.  It is astounding how poor the use, how little the benefits.  Prayer is our most formidable weapon, but the one in which are the least skilled, the most averse to its use.  We do everything else for the heathen, save the things that God wants us to do.  Prayer is the only thing that dose any good, makes all else we do efficient.  

There is enough of God’s power available to answer every prayer ever prayed in his will.  Leonard Ravenhill, in Why Revival Tarries, on page 156, writes, “One might estimate the weight of the world, tell the size of the celestial city, count the stars of heaven, measure the speed of lightening, and tell the time of the rising and the setting of the sun, but you cannot estimate prayer power.  Prayer is as vast as God because He is behind it.  Prayer is as mighty as God because he has committed Himself to answer it.”

R. A. Torrey preached, “Prayer is the key that unlocks all the storehouse of God’s infinite grace and power.  All that God is and all that God has is at the disposal of prayer.”  Then he went on to say, “There have been revivals without much preaching, but there has been a mighty revival without mighty praying.”
  
Prayer is absolutely indispensable to revival.   No fact is plainer in God’s word.  Pentecost was preceded and permeated with prayer.  The 120 gathered in the Upper Room and prayed.  They did not discuss prayer; they prayed.  They did not preach; they prayed.  They were not there to organize; they were there to agonize.  They did not write about a revival; they wrought out a revival through prayer.  Prayer is the spirit of a living church, the secret of stalwart Christianity, the paramount requisite to revival, the very epitome of kingdom extension.  The order in Acts was united, continued prayer, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the glad and hearty reception of the truth, which led immediately to the salvation of 3,000 souls.  That was the beginning, the revival continued. 

Prayer must always precede a revival.  This was the order in the first New Testament revival.  That prayer meeting in the Upper Room was the most significant meeting perhaps ever held by any company of Christians.  The citizens in Jerusalem attached no importance to the meeting in the Upper Room.  It was held by nobodies.  No one would have judged that this meeting was such an important assemblage, but on this group of people, the thought of God was supremely centered.  It represented a force that would move Jerusalem and even shake the Roman Empire to the center and grow until it filled the world.  The Divine Order, as recorded in Acts, puts prayer first.  The place of prayer in a revival is not a secondary place, it is primary.  It is not something to be used and neglected according to our whims.   It is indispensable and must not be neglected if results are to be obtained.  When the 120 prayed for ten days, when they were all together with one accord, Pentecost came.  Heaven’s windows were opened, revival was experienced, Christians were empowered, souls were saved, wickedness was halted, and righteousness reigned.  Not only were there 3,000 souls added unto them, but the spirit of revival continued, and souls were added unto the church day-by-day. 

A revival will come today if God’s children will pray.  Prayer must be given its place of primacy.  We must major on prayer.  There is no subterfuge from it as there is no substitute for it.  Organization is important; meetings to discuss revival are important; informing people about our evangelistic crusade is necessary; preaching is powerfully potent, but none of these nor all of these can take the place of prayer.  We must turn to God in prayer if we are to have a revival.  Then power will come.  Preaching will be easier.  Serving the Lord will be more joyous.  The devil will retreat.  God’s kingdom will advance and the Lord will reign. 
 
Do many Christians pray, really pray, today?  Do many of us preachers know how to pray?  Do we pray all night as Jacob did until the blessing came?  Do we pray as Paul and Silas did in a Philippian jail until release came and revival started.  Do we pray as Elijah did on Carmel until the whole nation turned to God in one day?  Do we pray as the little group did for Peter until the prison door was opened and Peter was delivered to them?  Do we pray as John Knox did when he cried, “Oh, Lord, give me Scotland or I die.”?  Do we pray as Jesus prayed, all night out on the mountainside?  Do we pray as the Syro-Phoenician mother prayed until the answer came?   Have we learned the lessons of the primacy of prayer?  Can it be true that much that passes for prayer today is distant, formal, soulless, and dangerously akin to the mechanical prayers of pagan devotees?  If our praying is to be transforming and transfiguring, it must be the genuine outcome of pure devoted souls.  Such praying is without equal and there is no substitute for it.   

This article “Jacob’s Substitutes For Prayer” written by R. L. Wyser is excerpted from Bible Preaching Resource written by R. L. Wyser April/June 2001.

This material is most likely copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for personal study or research purposes.