OPENING
Talk about the courage to suffer:
A first-grade teacher seated her students in a circle. She asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. One by one, each child got up and announced, "I’d like to be a nurse like my mother," or "I want to be a banker like my father," or "I want to be a teacher like you, Miss Smith."
The last child to speak was the most shy and timid little boy in the class. He said, "When I get big, I’m going to be a lion tamer in the circus. I’m going to face those animals with my whip and chair and make them leap through hoops of fire and obey all of my commands."
Seeing the disbelieving looks on the faces of his classmates that he could ever act so boldly or bravely, he was quick to reassure them, "Well, of course, I’ll have my mother with me."
MOVE
For the last couple of weeks, we’ve looked at some central figures of the OT, Abram, later named Abraham one of his sons, Isaac and last week we began to at Jacob. We talked about some of the similarities between the unknowns of Abrahams life, and those of Jesus.
We discovered that as Abram, he fathered a son by his wife’s servant Hagar, and whose name is Ishmael. Just after that event, God changed Abram name from Abram (Father of your native land) to Abraham (Father of the multitudes) and, as Abraham, at age around 100 yrs, Abraham became the father of Isaac.
And of course, as we explored the story of Abraham and Isaac, we discovered what were for most of us, some surprising facts; for one, the age of Isaac. He was not the young boy as he is most often depicted in religious paintings. He was, the best evidence shows, a mature man of about 37 yrs! And, I think we made a good case to interpret the story of Isaac’s potential sacrifice and God’s intervention as more than a test of Abraham’s love for God, trust of God and righteousness. Could we not agree that we can also interpret that story as a demonstration of God’s intense love for Abraham, and mankind as to stop Abraham before plunging the knife because God never intended to have Abraham endure the pain of sacrificing his son. Instead, God sent HIS only Son, Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice. I believe we can also see from this story, it is never, has never been in God’s plan for us to suffer such tragic losses. That is not to say we don’t suffer those kinds of losses, but when we do, God suffers with us, not because He planned our loss, but because He knows the pain of loss.
MOVE
We saw that, Abram passed his wife Sari off as his sister to avoid, in his mind, being killed, by the Egyptians when he fled to Egypt because of a famine. We saw Isaac doing the same thing, passing off his wife as his sister when he encounters Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, again to avoid in his mind, his death.
Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, like Abram’s wife, was barren. Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife and she became pregnant with twin boys. Scripture tells us they jostled with each other within her womb. When they were born, the first son was red and his body hairy and so they named him Esau…which means….hairy. The second boy was born grasping the heel of his brother, and so they named him Jacob… which means he grasps the heel, or figuratively, he deceives.
From our reading last week, we can consider Jacob a natural man vs. a Godly man. He looked only to his own instincts to interpret life. As we read Jacob’s story he had made a mess of things. He’s greedy, self-serving and it seems, without much of a conscience. He cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright, deceived his blind old father into giving him the blessing meant for Esau, and last week we found him on his way to stay with relatives because things were way too hot for him back home. Still, God sees something valuable in this schemer that apparently even Jacob himself didn’t perceive.
We read about and talked about Jacob’s dream… the stairway and Heaven’s Open Door. Jacob’s dream reminded him of the realities that God’s presence encompasses much more than what he could SEE around him! I pray this story reminds us of God’s presence around us always. That is more that we see with OUR eyes also. There is an eternal dimension --- heaven --- that exists as well, and it is closely connected to the life we know.
God promises Jacob “I will not leave you”… The God of the universe promised to accompany him, reminding Jacob all the promises He’d ever made were still valid. And those promises are valid for us today as well.
Jacob’s story is an amazing one and one we will come back to from time to time to fill in some of the gaps. But to get to this mornings lesson, we need a little background.
MOVE
After the dream, Jacob continues on and finds himself in Haran. There he falls in lover with Rachel, the daughter of Laban who is his uncle. So, he asks his uncle for Rachel’s hand. Laban says yes BUT only if Jacob would work for Laban for seven years. Jacob says yes and does the work only to be deceived by Laban who slips Rachel’s older sister Leah into the marriage bed instead. Alas, Jacob the deceiver has been duped himself.
Now here’s a thought. Leah was not Jacob’s choice, she was instead God’s initial choice for Jacob and in fact becomes a part of the family line of the promised Messiah. Leah’s son Judah later receives the birthright and the place of leadership among the 12 sons of Israel, and in fact, both David and Jesus would be direct descendants of Leah through Judah. Hum-m-m, our choice…. God’s choice?
MOVE
Eventually, Jacob does marry Rachel, who by the way, was. Like Sari/Sarah, Abraham’s wife and like Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, initially barren. Rachel too delivers her maidservant to Jacob…. Well, eventually Rachel too becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son…named Joseph…. Ah, but that’s another story.
Many other things happened to Jacob and between Jacob and Laban. Much of it trickery and deceit on the part of both men. And eventually, Jacob flees from Laban, and obeying God, heads back home… home to his family… including, you guessed… brother Esau. You remember Esau, the one who vowed to destroy his brother Jacob because of the wrongs done to him by Jacob.
Now Jacob is understandably concerned about what will happen when he meets Esau. After all, the last time whey had been together, Esau had threatened to kill him. True, Jacob had been away for 20 years now, but… had those years mellowed Esau’s anger or fueled his grudge into full-blown hatred?
The night before his is to meet his brother, Jacob sends his wives and maidservants and his eleven sons away… and all his possessions across a stream into another camp. And so, once again we find Jacob alone, nervous and it’s night time…. “and a man wrestled with him till daybreak”
Jacob struggled with all his strength. At first, he must have thought.. “this must be Esau who has come to destroy me…” …… or perhaps someone sent by Esau to murder him under the cover of darkness….
But as the struggle continues, Jacob comes to realize this is not Esau, or an assassin, but instead, this is God Himself and Jacob draws on every ounce of strength and energy within him and refuses to stop until God had blessed him. Who was that man????? Jesus???
The man, God, does bless him and as a part of that blessing, God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, which means “he struggles with God.” To this day, the Jewish nation retains that name, and it is still a nation that struggles with God.
MOVE
Jacob’s new name also implied a new identity in terms of his relationship with God. God may not always change a person’s name with every encounter, but there is ALWAYS change. Remember 2Corinthians 5: 17 tells us that when we commit our lives to Jesus, he changes us into someone brand new… “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has god, the new has come.”
Paul in his letter to Titus referred to such a radical change as the “washing of rebirth”; “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He save us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He save us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy spirit, whom He poured our on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3: 4-7)
Jacob’s encounter with God altered him forever, so he named the place where he and God had wrestled Peniel, which means, “face of God.”
MOVE
Each of us needs our own “Peniel,” a place to meet with God, wrestle with him and come away changed. God has given us just such a place------the Bible. In His Word we can meet Him, get to know Him and come away forever changed. In the Bible we have the awesome opportunity to meet God face to face! He tells us who He is and what He wants from us and even divulges His plan for His creation.
Everyone struggles to make sense of life at times. Bad things happen; illness strikes; fighting breaks out; war begins. None of it seems to be decipherable at the time. We feel as if chaos is emerging and there is little that we can do to put it in order. So we fight. We wrestle to overcome the doubt, the fear, the unknown. We try to put the blame and the work somewhere else. And we are left in the dark.
David Hansen, in his book The Art of Pastoring, tells of the struggle he had to understand a nursing home patient. “Daisy was a stroke victim in her 80s. She lived in a wheelchair. Daisy was aphasiac; she couldn’t talk straight. I couldn’t understand a word she said, but her aphasia wasn’t her problem, it was my problem. I had to figure out what she was saying.”
It is often our problem, our task, to figure out what God is trying to tell us when we wrestle with events in our lives.
—Jill H. Valentine, “I have no idea,” October 28, 2001, Peace Lutheran Church Web Site, zianet.com.
What baggage holds you back from enjoying the most fulfilling possible relationship with God? When in your life have you wrestled with God and come away changed?
