WRESTLING WITH GOD
Please turn to Genesis 32.
Having made a covenant of peace with Laban, his nettlesome father-in-law, Jacob traveled southward through the country east of the Jordan River. The “angels of God” met him there. Their purpose seems to have been to set up a meeting between Jacob and his twin brother Esau. Jacob had a high degree of anxiety because of the trickery Jacob and his mother Rebekah had used on Isaac years earlier to gain the blessing that would define Jacob’s place in history. Jacob had good reason to fear his brother, before whose wrath he had fled twenty years ago.
Now Jacob is on the final approach to an encounter with a brother who might still be angry enough to kill him.
Many years later, Jacob’s distant grandson, King Solomon, wrote,
A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. Prov 18:19
Consistent with that pearl of wisdom Jacob sent a message to Esau, 3 times referring to Esau as “my Lord,” and 4 times referring to himself as “your servant.”
The messengers return with ominous news: “Esau is coming with 400 men to meet you.”
(v7) Jacob divides his entourage into two parts, hoping that if one part is attacked, the other will escape.
Jacob then prays for deliverance from Esau’s wrath, reminding God of the blessing that had long ago been spoken by Isaac –
Read Gen 32:9-11 (Jacob’s prayer)
(v13-14) Jacob prepares for the next day’s encounter by sending gifts ahead by his servants – “two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty milking camels and their calves, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.”
(v22-23) Then he sent Leah and Rachel - the wives he had earned from Laban – and their servants and children across the Jabbok River, along with everyone and everything except himself.
Jacob was now alone. But not for long.
Read Gen 32:24-31
II. What are we to take away from this story?
Is it more than a strange and interesting tale - something that we need to understand and take to heart?
The story is remembered and mentioned hundreds of years later by Hosea (12:4), suggesting that it is not merely an interesting although forgettable passage among Jacob’s many experiences. It has long-lasting meaning.
To try and understand the meaning of this episode in Jacob’s life, we will take it by parts and then attempt to put it all together and get a grasp of what God was doing.
I. Examination of the story and its meaning
It is sandwiched within the story leading up to Jacob’s meeting with his brother Esau, who he had not seen for years.
A. A man appeared, and wrestled with Jacob until daybreak.
First, who was “the man?”
Wrestling, it seems, was the man’s idea, for the bible says “the man” wrestled with Jacob.
But who was he?
Josephus says the man was a phantasm, which would be an illusion borne of the imagination, or a spectre, which is a ghost or apparition. Jacob did not imagine, or dream that this encounter happened.
My translation of this passage in Josephus’ account says he was “an angel,” which is very different from a product of Jacob’s imagination.
But Josephus didn’t write his record until the story was about 1800 years old.
Jacob, on the other hand, lived it, and identified the visitor as God himself, and was amazed to have survived the encounter.
I don’t see how either Josephus or we are in a very good position to disagree with Jacob, who had wrestled with whoever he was - all night.
It appears to be beyond question that Jacob wrestled with some manifestation of God.
B. The man, or God, did not prevail over Jacob.
The two combatants were Jacob and God. How could Jacob endure for a moment in such a contest?
Not “could not” but “did not” prevail. God wanted Jacob to win!
This was a trial for Jacob, not for God.
The trial related to Jacob’s present circumstances—his meeting with Esau—was at hand.
Would Jacob survive tomorrow’s meeting with Esau because of Jacob’s tactical maneuvers or would Jacob survive because he was the heir of God’s promises?
That, I believe we shall see, was the trial Jacob wrestled with that night.
C. Jacob is injured in the fight. The man “touches” his hip socket, dislocating the joint.
It therefore appears that the wrestling was in some degree physical, for when the man could not - or did not - prevail, he “touched” Jacob’s hip socket and dislocated it.
The thigh muscle is one of the largest and strongest in the body.
God touched Jacob at the point of greatest supposed strength – Jacob’s skill at manipulating things for his own advantage. God took that away and replaced Jacob’s strong suite with God’s own strength – BUT Jacob was left with a limp, perhaps to remind him not to revert to reliance on his own strength.
Then a strange thing happened.
D. The man said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.”
Time for the stranger to leave.
Why the breaking of day signaled that it was time for the man, or God, to depart, we do not know.
Was the man nocturnal, and had to get somewhere before daylight?
Jacob appears to have had the choice about whether the man would stay or go, for...
…
E. Another strange thing happened.
Jacob refused to let the man depart just yet, as he demanded,
I will not let you go unless you bless me.
Jacob sought a blessing. What blessing did Jacob desire?
If his immediate concern is any indicator, the blessing he sought was deliverance from Esau’s revenge.
What was the blessing Jacob received? A new name, indicative of a new character.
A new kind of life.
F. In response, another strange thing happened (it was a night of strange happenings).
The man asked Jacob, “What is your name?”
Jacob answers, “Jacob.”
Why did God ask Jacob his name?
By asking Jacob his name, God was getting Jacob to acknowledge his character, and to remember the pain and loss he had caused by his cheating ways.
The two of them wrestled all night, and now he asks who Jacob is?
By answering, Jacob confessed his life’s pattern. Jacob means supplanter, or usurper - one who takes another’s place.
Jacob may have remembered that – years ago – Esau had reminded Jacob of the meaning of his name after he learned that Jacob had contrived to receive the blessing Isaac intended for Esau.
Gen 27:36 – “Esau said, Is he not rightly named Jacob?”
G. Jacob receives a new name, Israel, which means “strives with God,” or “God strives.”
Israel was to be the name of a great nation.
Jacob’s new name is very durable. The name still with us today, as the name of a chief ally of our nation.
H. Jacob (now Israel) asks, “Tell me your name.” The stranger says, “Why do you ask my name.”
And blesses Jacob. With what words or actions we cannot say, since Moses did not.
But Jacob then realizes that he has been wrestling with God himself, and exclaims.
I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered,
and called the place Peniel, which means, “face of God.”
The name change correlates with a change of character for Jacob the swindler.
III. Transformation
Whatever questions we may be able to answer and conclusion we may draw about this story, one things stands out – the story is about change.
Jacob (now Israel) was a changed man after this experience.
Before this, Jacob had not seen that he must receive blessings as gifts from God—not something to be obtained by conniving--and so be a conduit of blessing to others by means other than connivance, deceit, and tactical maneuvers.
He had not recognized his incompetence to win the great and precious blessings first promised to Abraham.
He was like his grandmother Sarah, who believed she had to make the arrangements by which God would bless Abraham with posterity.
Jacob had not yet taken to heart the difference in inheriting God’s blessings simply as God’s voluntary gift, rather than by Jacob’s own skullduggery.
If Jacob had received the land, the nation, and the eventual blessing to all mankind through his seed by Jacob’s own clever pulling of strings, THAT would have nullified God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob himself.
Those blessings were to come from God, not from Jacob’s own strength.
Must every person wrestle with God to cross a personal Rubicon?
It is not for me to say whether everyone must wrestle with God as Jacob did to bloom in God’s garden, but this I do know:
Every person must undergo a transformation.
Romans 12:2 “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
If that change involves wrestling with God, so be it.
The result of Christ’s work in lives today can be summarized in two lines:
• Salvation of the soul
• Rehabilitation of the sinner. The latter necessarily involves change, the definition of repentance.
If we come face to face with God, we cannot help thinking about what God sees. It might make us cringe to realize the clarity with which God sees us.
But like Jacob, God sees not only what we are, but what we can become as he works his will within us.
God can see an Israel in you.
This passage from Expositor’s Bible Commentary states the conclusion very nicely:
In that hour the man learns the most valuable truth he can learn, that it is God who is wishing to save him, not he who must wrest a blessing from an unwilling God. Instead of any longer looking on himself as against the world, he takes his place as one who has the whole energy of God’s will at his back, to give him rightful entrance into all blessedness. So long as Jacob was in doubt whether it was some kind of man that was opposing him, he wrestled on; and our foolish ways of dealing with God terminate when we recognize that He is not such a one as ourselves. We naturally act as if God had some pleasure in thwarting us-as if we could, and even ought to, maintain a kind of contest with God. We deal with Him as if He were opposed to our best purposes and grudged to advance us in all good, and as if He needed to be cajoled by forced feelings and sanctimonious demeanor. We act as if we could make more way were God not in our way, as if our best prospects began in our own conception and we had to win God over to our views. If God is unwilling, then there is an end: no device nor force will get us past Him. If He is willing, why all this unworthy dealing with Him, as if the whole idea and accomplishment of salvation did not proceed from Him?
God is willing for you to be the very best YOU.
You make it possible, but God makes it happen.
