Genesis 32:22-31
Wrestling with God
Have you ever had a pivotal moment in your life that has forever changed you? For me, one such moment was the day I joined the military. I felt like God wanted me to do something truly significant with my life, and that decision forever changed me.
In the life of Jacob, scripture records two life-changing events, scattered some twenty years apart. These moments would forever define his life. Last time I was with you, two weeks ago, we looked at the first event, Jacob’s dream of a “stairway to heaven,” with angels descending from and ascending to heaven. In this dream, God confirmed that he was with Jacob, even while a fugitive on the run from his brother’s anger.
The second pivotal moment in Jacob’s life is our story today, as Jacob returns home to the Promised Land. While away for those twenty years, he had picked up a couple of wives and a whole bunch of livestock. This conniving man who tricked his father and stole his brother’s birthright is now preparing to see Esau again. He is a lot wealthier than when he left, and we can only hope, a little more mature.
Jacob’s first life-changing event was in a dream, but in this second event there is no sleep. Jacob is literally up all night, wrestling with an angel of God, whom he finally comes to understand as God himself.
Have you ever wrestled with God? I thought of a couple of applications, ways we might find ourselves wrestling with the Almighty. First ...
1. We wrestle with God in prayer. People have used the term “wrestling” in a figurative sense to describe coming to grips with an important decision. For instance, you might wrestle over a career choice, such as when you or your loved one joined the military. Or you might wrestle over a wedding proposal, or when to have kids, or whether to get a divorce, or when it’s time to retire.
And, in the same figurative sense, you might wrestle with God in prayer. Certain matters are so important that you find yourself praying like the Old Testament character Hannah, so fervently an onlooker might suppose you were drunk. But in reality, you are desperate to know God’s will, to adjust your will to his, to know how to proceed in the best possible way.
Jacob was desperate for God. His scheming twenty years earlier had left his brother Esau in a murderous mood, and now Jacob was coming home to find who knows what? Right before today’s passage, a scout had reported that Esau was coming with 400 men! Verse 7 describes Jacob as in “great fear and distress.” So, in typical Jacob cunning, he divides his camp into two groups, thinking at least one camp would survive an attack. He also sends ahead a series of gifts to soften up his brother. But most importantly, he prays.
Verses 9-12 record Jacob’s prayer: 9 Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ 10 I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. 11 Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. 12 But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’”
I like Jacob’s prayer. It is honest and reflects his character, imperfections and all. In verse 11 he prays for himself, and then, as an afterthought, mentions his family. “Oh yeah, God, don’t forget about them, too!” In his prayer, Jacob thanks God for his blessings, asks God for rescue, and reminds God of God’s earlier promises. Some scholars believe Jacob prays all night to God, that this is the wrestling match, a figurative description of prayer born out of adversity.
A New Testament example of a prayer wrestler is Epaphras. In Colossians 4:12, Paul describes him as “always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.” Epaphras cared so much for his fellow believers that he wrestled in prayer for them.
Charles Stanley reminds us, “Fight all your battles on your knees and you win every time.” And Oswald Chambers notes, “Prayer does not equip us for greater works— prayer is the greater work.” Begin in prayer. Wrestle with God until you have that “peace that passes all understanding.”
And you know the funny thing about prayer? More often than not, it doesn’t change your situation as much as it does you! Look at Jacob’s life. For his prayers to be answered, God needed to do a work in him, particularly with his self-centeredness. So, we wrestle with God in prayer, but also ...
2. We wrestle with God in pride. Jacob had a pride problem. His whole life was one constant struggle to satisfy his own needs. From inside the womb, he grabbed his brother’s heel, which is the literal meaning of his name. Jacob means “heal grabber,” or in a more figurative sense, one who manipulates or deceives. Jacob later deceived his brother Esau out of his birthright. He deceived his father. And he struggled with his father-in-law for his wives and livestock.
Proverbs 16:18 says, “A haughty spirit goes before a fall.” In today’s story, Jacob meets his match and finds his fall. After wrestling this mysterious angelic being all night long, Jacob refuses to be defeated. That is, until the angel reaches out with a single touch and reduces Jacob to a crippled man for the rest of his life. The angel touches Jacob’s hip socket, which for a wrestler is the pivotal point of strength. Jacob’s limp would be a permanent reminder of his dependence on God.
Warren Wiersbe notes, “God meets us at whatever level he finds us in order to lift us to where he wants us to be.” God meets Jacob right in his pride and lifts him up to be a new person. Such a pivotal time in Jacob’s life calls for a name change. Jacob the supplanter, the manipulator, the deceiver, will now become “Israel,” meaning “one who struggles with God.”
Warren Wiersbe says it’s as if God is saying to Jacob, “Are you going to continue living up to your name, deceiving yourself and others, or will you admit what you are and let me change you?” Isn’t it refreshing that the people God chooses to use in scripture are so messed up? It gives me hope. What about you? And I love how God meets them right where they are, and works with them there to help them become the people they need to be.
Jacob’s wrestling match will change him forever. As he becomes “Israel,” the father of the twelve tribes of the nation Israel, he certainly hasn’t arrived. At times, he will revert back to the Jacob way of doing things, and scripture will refer to him as Jacob. His name changes point to our own struggles to live out our identity in Christ. Sometimes we yield to the Holy Spirit and live the way God wants us to live, and sometimes we fall back to our pre-Christian ways. But fortunately, God doesn’t give up on us.
Communion is an appropriate time to reflect on Jacob’s angelic visitor. The prophet Hosea calls him an angel (Hosea 12:4). Jacob recognizes him as God himself, and names the place “Piniel” or “Pinuel,” which means “the face of God.” Theologians call this appearance of God in the flesh a “theophany.” I call it a “Christophany,” because I believe—along with many scholars—that these Old Testament appearances of God in human form are actually the pre-incarnate Christ. If God wants to show up as a human, which member of the Trinity is more appropriate than Jesus himself? Don’t get bothered by the fact that he hasn’t been born yet. After all, as the angel Gabriel told the virgin Mary, “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). Jesus himself pointed to his own timeless nature when he said, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). And various scriptures tell us Jesus was present at creation (John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16).
The question is, will you allow Jesus to meet you right where you are right now? Will you have your own wrestling match with God, and be forever changed? Will you give Jesus all your conniving, scheming, planning, and deceiving, and allow him to change you forever, hopefully not with a hip out of joint, but to put his mark on you, to figuratively rename you, to remake you from a Jacob to an Israel?
Please take this time, as the Communion elements are passed in a moment, to invite Jesus to take all your life—all your sin, all your struggles, all the things beyond your control—and to work in you to make you the person of faith he has designed you to become. Let us pray:
Thank you, Lord, for Jacob. Thank you for showing us all his flaws in vivid detail. And thank you, most of all, for showing us how you still used him to father a nation, your people, who would struggle with you to learn to follow you. Help us to give up our struggles with each other and with ourselves, and to meet you, turning every worry, every point of control over to you, knowing you will meet us and guide us, and replace our anxiety with your peace. Help someone now to trust you for the very first time with their life. We pray this in the name of Jesus, amen.
