Jacob Wrestles With God, A Salvation Story. Series

Read Genesis 32:22-32

Who here likes a bit of alone time, the family have gone off on a trip and here’s an opportunity, there’s that novel that you would like to finish reading, that project that you’ve been wanting to finish or in my case get started, the hobby that it would be good to lose yourself in for a few hours or that patch of garden you want to weed, the biscuits that you have been wanting to bake as a treat to yourself, the Netflix movie, the whatever it is; you get where I’m coming from, that valuable alone time…a bit of that just me time.

Having read the passage from Genesis; let’s remember. This is a highly stressful time for Jacob, earlier in the chapter we see that angels of God had meet with Jacob, he had had a divine encounter. Then some of his own people returned to him after he had sent them out to his brother Esau, yes, the brother who he deceived out of his inheritance. He was told by these men that Esau was okay with that and that he held no grudge. Not likely, Jacob was told, Esau was on his way his was with four hundred men, what sounds like a small army. Jacobs blood pressure immediately shot through the roof, verse seven say that he was “greatly afraid and distressed.” You can imagine him running in circles panicking. He then divided his flocks and family up, the wives, the kids, the servants, the camels and donkeys into two camps. He believed that if Esau and his army attacked one camp the other would survive. Then he prayed to God, a good long prayer, a repentant prayer, a prayer of pleading deliverance. Then he put together a gift, a huge gift for Esau, which he gave his servants to deliver to Esau. His thinking was with such a generous gift he could appease Esau. Hundreds of goats, Billy goats and sheep, rams and milking camels, cows, bulls and let's not forget the donkeys.

Here's Jacob from verse 22 to 32, a bloke with two wives, their female servants, a heap of children, a few herds of noisy animals and all these possessions and servants and he’s taken the tents down, and he’s got them all moved, he took them all to the ford across the stream called Jabbok which is incidentally a river that flows westward into the Jordan Valley 39 kilometers north of the Dead Sea.

Then he has sent them across and is alone. After the frantic send off, the serenity, ah the serenity, peace, the quiet, a few moments alone. This time alone was part of his cunning plan not to get monstered and smote by Esau and his four-hundred wild men. A little time to relax, take stock, maybe enjoy that jar of biscuits that he has kept secreted away in his camel's saddle bag, the skin of thyme and rosehip tea...then some bloke turns up and ruins it all. He doesn’t know this guy by sight, but he’s in the way.

A fight breaks out between them. Time to teach this stranger a lesson.

Here’s a big question was this a man, an angel or as some commentators say it could have been God as Jesus himself? Well then there are those who ask was this a metaphor, a dream or was it real. I would like to point out here that injuries don’t occur through metaphors or dreams. This was a real tussle. An all-night scrap that resulted in a permanently damaged hip socket for Jacob. On a human level this was an even battle between two men, no one was really winning, and the fight went on all night. Jacob was evenly matched with the man, the man seeing he was not going to win put Jacob’s hip socket out of joint. Then he asked to be let go for the dawn was breaking. Jacob’s reply, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Then comes the blessing, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with man and have prevailed.”

Now the question of ‘who’ this is that Jacob wrestled with, the restoration scriptures lean towards this being God, Jesus is fact, remember that God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, God and two angels visited Abraham just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God is also not limited by space, time or matter, remember it was He who spoke these things into being at the beginning when he created it all. It’s worth remembering here that Jacob never hears the man’s name. But it becomes evident to him who it was that wrestled him, who it was who changed his name and damaged his hip.